Let’s March

Haz Tan — Mon, 11 May 2009 11:45:48 +0000

It was said of Cicero that when people heard him, they turned to one another and said,

“Great speech.”

but when Demosthenes spoke, people turned to one another and said,

“Let’s march!”

Words that sound pleasant are works of art. Words that incite action are tools of power.

What effect do your words have?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cicero

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demosthenes

Create a habit out of your client

Haz Tan — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 08:07:06 +0000

A business grows by customers exchanging money for value.

This could be expressed in the following relation:

Earned Revenue = # Customers * Rate of Money/Value Exchange

Earned Revenue increases/decreases according to # of customers and rate of money/value exchange.

A business exists to earn revenue (and of course, profits). So we can increase earned revenue by

a) increasing # of customers, and/or

b) increasing rate of money/value exchange.

To improve (a), we must first define what it is we want to increase. Let us define “Customer”. The obvious definition is one who buys a product/service. The deeper definition is that the word “Customer” derives from “Custom”, meaning “habit”. So for a business to have a customer, they have somebody who is ‘habitually’ buying from them. So what happens if a customer only purchases once? Doing something once is not enough to consider it a habit (a habit is a repeated behavior routine).

If a customer only purchases once, then you have to sell to somebody new each time. If your population size is limited, then your earned revenue will eventually drop to zero, and the business will no longer exist. However, most population sizes are relatively dynamic and will keep getting replenished (as in the case of a common single purchase – coffins). The key here is that your customer is not one single person in the literal sense, but “people about to die”. This of course, creates an unlimited population size, as macabre as it may be. As a result, one can keep selling to new clients all the time.

So one can grow revenue, as long as the new clients are being acquired all the time. However, let’s see what it takes to sell to a person more than once – to create a ‘habit’ out of a client.

After a customer purchases from you, there are only a limited number of reasons why they would not purchase from you again. Remembering that a sale consists of filling a need:

1. Their need has been fulfilled, and they do not need it again at this point in time.

eg: after purchasing a car.

2. They still have the need, however they would rather get it filled elsewhere.

eg: because it is cheaper/better/easier/etc elsewhere.

3. They still have the need, but they forgot/don’t know how to fill it.

eg: people who see a dentist only when there’s a problem.

4. They still have the need, but are unable to fulfill it.

eg: lack of finances/time/energy/etc.

These are just four reasons that I observe .. any others?

A business then has the challenge of optimizing each of these needs as much as possible to 0%. Of course, some may have percentages that are far higher than 0%. However, the highest % should not necessarily be the one to focus on optimizing. A business should focus on the areas that the largest difference could be made pre/post optimization (taking into account time/effort of course).

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Let’s March

Create a habit out of your client

10 Phrases to Attract Return Customers