The advantage of research in business is its provision of direct access to your clients’ mind, allowing you to evaluate, correct, maintain and consolidate your position in the market

Once we have an idea of our position in the market and we gather information that will aid our diagnosis of our challenges and limitations, we are on the right track to moving forward. This, of course, only applies to those who feel they are not where they ought to be in their business sectors, however, this means that great opportunities lay ahead of you.

Challenges make your business life exciting: discovering the challenges, enumerating the challenges, planning a path to overcoming each challenge, making a list of milestones you would like to attain and attaching a time frame to each and identifying the point at which you would feel you have overcome the challenge and made an opportunity out of it.

It is noteworthy at this juncture to mention a quote from a master at strategizing for battles, Sir. Winston Churchill, who said, “Difficulties mastered are opportunities won.” Planning and persistence are the strengths of overcoming challenges.

We ought to list our challenges as we perceive them and also as our customers or clients perceive them. The customer/client list will be generated from our survey and questionnaire as discussed last month.

The list of respondents should include current customers, customers we failed to convert, those who have moved to the competition or stopped using our products or services altogether and those we aspire to include on our database. It is important to know first hand from current clients how we can add value to what we offer currently. Because of the diversity of the list you will have, it may be best to introduce a scale on each challenge so you can prioritise which is critical, important and marginal in nature. The issues that are raised most frequently and by a great number of respondents should be addressed first and given the utmost priority

Using poor on-time-delivery as an example of what occurs frequently in services, ie lateness in delivery. A case that comes to mind is that of soft furnishing ventures that provide made-to-measure curtains, blinds, beddings, table cloths and napkins. Usually, to secure the job, they are prompt at committing the client to fabric choice, styles and deposits; however, they always default on delivery with multiple deliveries, wrong styles and minor adjustments that go on forever. This is the sort of challenge that hinders return of customers and causes the merchant not to get referrals. If this is the case, the merchants can give themselves a six month plan to rectify this challenge.

These are some likely steps that can be taken to surmount the challenge:

• Begin to record the given date for the delivery and the actual date the final delivery was done, i.e. expected versus actual delivery times.
• Determine realistically how long it should take to make and deliver each item both for busy and not so busy periods.
• Try to determine the average time of your delays, perhaps you always deliver two weeks late.
• Put up a progress chart that can be viewed by all, even your clients, to show what targets you have set and what you are realising
• Record your improvements and if there are no improvements, go back to finding what are causing the delays again
• When a midway milestone has been achieved, reward yourself
• Send out letters or text messages to clients to see if they have experienced improvements in your service if they have used you before and for new clients, inquire if they are impressed with your timely service – customers are usually happy to know you are trying hard to do your best to serve them.
• This one improvement can bring a significant change in the volume of your business. Reliable and timely services are appreciated by many and can be used as a reason to charge premium prices. People are willing to pay for better services.

Go back and make such a plan for other challenges. You can run the plans concurrently. It is said that it is five times easier to keep an old customer than it is to get a new one and also, that past customer and referrals make up more than 90% of successful business owners clients. Most successful business owners claim that 50% of their business comes from referrals from past clients.

Key Notes

• Pay attention to your repeat customers, they are worth their weight in gold.
• Reward your customers that refer new businesses to you.
• Keep a file of past clients and use the list to keep in touch, especially if you have updated information on your business.
• Keep your clients up-to-date on your activities, progress and if you move locations or change contact details.
• Most of the changes can be affected in-house and without additional