When your business finds itself stuck in a rut, it’s easy to think there are no ways to get it out. It’s easy to want to alleviate yourself the stress of having to free it of its rut by giving up with it all together. But before you find yourself taking that drastic measure, try putting some of the advice below into practice…
The first thing to take into consideration in the venture of freeing your business of its rut is to pinpoint what it is that got it there in the first place. And the only way you can get a genuine, non-object outlook on this is to ask external forces. But what external forces should you ask? Well, you should simply take to asking your customers. They are the ones that can see your business for what it is and for what it offers — you, unfortunately, cannot. To get their feedback, you should simply ask for it once they have done business with you. But, beware, there is a proper way to do this. You can’t go in all guns a-blazing as that may lead you to losing one of the last customers you have left. No, you should be more tactful when you ask for feedback — one way to do so is to naturally slip the subject into conversation.
And if it’s the prices you set that is coming up more often than not in your customer’s feedback, then you should get to working on them right away. Of course, you cannot lower the prices too much as that won’t benefit your ROI. But you also can’t have set too high a price as that won’t induce custom. Therefore, you should try to deduce from the feedback you receive as to what should be your price list. Whether it be the more customer-oriented value-based pricing system that you choose. Or it’s counterpart, the far less customer-oriented cost-based pricing. You should choose one that you feel is fair for all parties.
Or it could even be your business’s customer relation skills that are appearing frequently in the feedback as being something that is impacting your business negatively. If this is the case then you should seek to improve the HR section of your business straight away. As stated in ‘Turn Your HR Into A Major Asset!’, you can take this task upon your own shoulders. You can educate yourself in the art of managing employees and getting the best out of them. You can seek to induce a communicative environment in your workspace by you, yourself, actively working in it. Or you could train your employees in the art of deal sealing by teaching them the importance of selling, negotiation and, most importantly, openness. No customer likes to feel as if they are talking to a robot employee or an employee that seemingly doesn’t want to be there. So make sure you are doing all you can to teach your employees that these are mannerisms that you want them to avoid. You are the leader of your team, therefore you need to lead them in the direction you want them to go in.
Freeing your business of its rut is difficult, but it’s not impossible. You just need to be willing to listen to the feedback given by your customers, and you need to be willing to act upon it. Even if it means tweaking your prices! Even if it means getting sterner with you employees!
