How to grow customer to your business

Growth of an entrepreneur depends on the satisfaction and growth of his customers. This is especially so in intermediate products or services. For instance, small scale chemical industrialist developed a unique solvent to act as drying agent in paint industry. He demonstrated to his paint manufacturing customer that by using his new solvent the paint quality would improve. The paint manufacturer used it and achieved better turnover. Similarly a textile processing entrepreneur built up his customer base by giving useful suggestions to them on colour and shade combinations for fabrics. In order to provide value for money and grow customers, an entrepreneur has to convince his customers with three things.

How much: the entrepreneur should be able to convince his customers with the quantity of incremental returns on his investments that is possible by buying the entrepreneurs product or service. In case of customer’s products, it is the incremental benefits or satisfaction which the consumer derives that matters. How quickly the entrepreneurs should be able to tell the customer the speed with which he would be able to supply the product or providable service. In competitive environment speed is an important factor. This means that if the entrepreneur wants to help his customer grow, he should do it fast.
How definite: the customer is given a definite idea about the entrepreneur’s capabilities to help him grow. How will buy and continue to buy only if the promise stands the test of time.

One important observation we have to make on the above discussion is that we have not been talking about profits, but customer satisfaction. Although an entrepreneur has to make higher levels of profit it should not be the bottom line to work towards. He has to think beyond, towards the customer without whom he cannot achieve growth and sustain it .this means providing growth values on a consistent basis. Also entrepreneurs should approach their customers and prove their growth values to build up business, to make a better impact. In other words, entrepreneurs should think of long term growth of the organization and factors influencing it.

Maintaining leadership
In a competitive environment, maintaining leadership is not easy. New substitutes and products made using new technologies would keep entering the market eroding competitiveness of existing firms. Under such circumstances, constant product improvement becomes essential to maintain product differentiation. Even in fields where competition is limited, it is worth attempting technological improvements either for cost reduction or product improvement. This means that the experience curve of such firms keep shifting continuously. Thus to face the competition effectively there should be strong sense of product differentiation through technological development.