Times change, people change and tastes change. What people want at one stage of their lives is not necessarily what they want at others. Are you keeping up with your regular customers? The people who have been doing business with you for years, sometimes decades don’t necessarily what the same things now that they did when they first started buying your products or services.
Know Your Customers
Updating customer information is key to keeping up with your customers wants, needs and desires. Some of the questions that need to be answered are:
Are they still purchasing in the same quantities, more or less than they did?
Are they still coming to events and have the types of events they attend changed?
Do they visit you as often as they used to?
Have the ways they purchased changed, e.g. they used to visit now they order via email.
Monitor your customer records regularly to see what changes have taken place in their buying and attendance patterns.
Stay Connected
People buy because they feel not because they think. The keys to the want and/or need to purchase are primarily emotional rather than logical. While logic does come into it, the emotional desire comes first. Part of the emotional desire to buy is driven by customer service. Customer service is important not just at the time of purchase but also in every facet of the ongoing relationship between the company and its customers. In small businesses interaction with the principals is a large draw to whether people buy or not. Customers who feel that they have a personal relationship with an owner or key employees makes a difference in the amount of money spent and the frequency of purchases.
The other key to connection is keeping your promises. What does your brand promise to the customer in advertising and promotion? When the customer buys the product, is that brand promise fulfilled?
The closer you are to your customers, the better your sales will be.
A tip of the glass from me to you
E Column
by Elizabeth “E” Slater, In Short Direct Marketing
A recognized expert in the fields of direct marketing and sales in the wine marketplace. Slater has taught more wineries and winery associations how to create and improve the effectiveness of their direct marketing programs and to make the most of each customer’s potential than anyone in the wine industry today.
