Differentiation Can Be a Niche Market

I remember starting may career in the late 1970's with an automotive jobber selling car parts. I enjoyed the job more for the discount on parts to work on my 1973 Camaro which was my money pit at the time. A money pit that I was very okay with...what a great looking and sounding car with the chrome side pipes that provided my peers with a great parking lot show at night spitting fire with every quick gear change. Ahh, the days of our youth. The jobber I worked for at the time was a family owned business and they were very successful for 25 years and most of the money they made went back to the family. I was just an employee but that was okay because of my Camaro.

Looking back on this company today, 30 years later, I remembered something unique and special about this two store operation, they had parts for cars that nobody else had. So many times I spoke to customers over the counter who travelled miles to our store for the rare part for that rare car that no one else had. Or because they knew from experience that no one else would have the part they started with us first. This small but successful automotive aftermarket parts business built a reputation on having in stock, sometimes with an inch of dust on it, the part you just can't get anywhere else. The company was known as Radex Automotive and at the time Radex was the jobber to beat. Even the big brand competitors could not take their market away because of customer loyalty. Radex found that their differentiation was the hard to find part. There was no science as to what unique part to stock, they just did it from 25 years of parts business experience and they were very good at it.

The question I have for you is; What are you doing to make your business unique or different or rare amongst your competition? Let me know your Unique Selling Point Proposition and how you are getting the word out to your prospects and customers?

I just added a link under this post title (or click here) to a great article published in Entrepreneur.com on Niche Marketing with some tips to follow for success.

Customer Referrals Can Be Automated

Every good sales person or business person knows the value of asking for a referral from your existing clients. But why not ask for a referral from your prospects. If you have read my previous posts you know that 'any prospect worth calling on once is worth calling on again'. In other words you build a relationship with a prospect until you are in the right place at the right time for business to be conducted. During this phase of building a relationship, why not ask your prospect, "Can you see how my services may help any of your business contacts?" What have you got to lose. Referrals are great, because this prospect is listening more to you than normal because of the referral who has called them on your behalf if you got the best kind of referral. Now imagine this referral process being automated...

The internet brings to a business much more than an online presence or e-commerce. The internet can automate many business processes and this includes sales techniques. When someone visits your site today they are generally researching for a buy. If your site fails to convert them to a customer, which if this happens frequently you may need to look at a new site, then why not have a pop up window that occurs when they click to leave your site that asks them questions. One question could be; 'Would you recommend our site or product or service to someone else? If so, please enter their contact information for the site link to be emailed to them with an introduction letter from the visitor to your site'. Why not entice the visitor with some credits to future business if the referral actually takes the call to action.

This automated approach to referrals when compared to traditional methods of lead generation is very inexpensive and will provide you further business marketing intelligence depending on the tool you use and the questions you ask.

What are you doing in your business today to automate your business processes?

Build It And They Will NOT Come

It is a very risky business person who believes that the product will create the need. We may argue that IBM and Microsoft with the desktop PC and DOS and then Windows is the exception and, the internet is certainly in many cases creating a need. However, it could be argued that the need was waiting patiently dormant for the innovators to play catch up. In other words, Sci-fiction movies from the 50's through the 60's and TV shows like Star Trek had already created the need for high tech tools and toys. In my mind, only a fool would risk everything on passion alone. Any amount of marketing intelligence, no matter how little, is better than no marketing intelligence at all.

When I first entered into the world of Custom Home Building I took a course which started in the States which upon completion provided me with more letters after my name. CSP, Certified New Home Sales Professional. One of the trainers, a large home development builder in Dallas, Texas, left me with the best advice; don't build the home you want to live in, build the home your market will buy.

From that point on I tried as often as possible to get some information, any information, that would protect my investment. I have found over the years that informal and formal surveys work very well. The informal survey is when you are asking the same questions to your customers and prospects over their desk, over coffee, over lunch or over dinner. I would ask questions that try and get a sense of where their future needs may be coming from and would also be a mix of finding out what problems they are experiencing and "what do you think of this idea that I'm kicking around in my head?" The informal survey takes longer so it is generally used for long term plans.

The formal survey is when you actually create specific questions to identify if a need exists in a target market you are considering entering into or to identify how to improve sales by identifying the needs of the prospects which in turn will be used later for marketing by addressing their needs with the benefits of the product or, of course, the services offered. There are many online survey tools you can use, for example; I use Survey Monkey, which is very user friendly and inexpensive. For larger ventures you may want to consider using a Third Party company which can also provide great analytics with the reports. The internet of course, with a properly built web solution can be a great resource for ongoing analytics. Any way you do it, just do it.

Build it and they will come is in most cases...build it and they will NOT come.