The Millionaire Mind Support Network

Wealth Principle
The Law Of Income: You Will Be Paid In Direct Proportion To The Value You Deliver According To The Marketplace.

I am a stanch proponent of self-directed business education. Part of my continuing business education routine is the commitment to read and study business magazines and trade journals. By studying the Wall Street Journal, Business Week, Fast Company, Entrepreneur, and Inc. cover-to-cover, I have received an excellent return on my investment of time. Every day I learn something new — tools to assess a business opportunity, a growth strategy, lessons learned, and how to manage my time and resources more effectively. As I read about the business wunderkinds, like Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg; or seasoned innovators like Apple’s Steve Jobs, I am reminded that the great companies have found ways to stay close to their customers. These firms are fully engaged with their customer base. They pay close attention to what their customers are saying, then develop products or services to meet their customers’ needs — or in Apple’s case, anticipate the market to give us, “What we never even knew we always wanted.”

Communication technology makes it easy for even a home-based, sole-proprietor, to tap into their customers’ base needs, wants and desires. Today, anyone can use Blogs, product/service forums, and users-groups to ask questions and carefully track the responses. To be successful, businesses must listen to and talk with customers. Apple’s early success was helped by their use of “Apple Evangelists.” These savvy, tech missionaries went out to the developers, the third party vendors and end-users and learned how to better serve their base.

Apple is committed to staying close to their clientele and they identify with them. Apple representatives give their customers the level of service they themselves would expect to receive. Apple’s symbiotic relationship with their customers necessitates paying attention to every link in their distribution chain; this means listening to everyone who helps get their products to market and soliciting suggestions for improving both the products and service.

Knowing, understanding and acting upon what the customer wants, is the smartest thing any business owner, big or small, can do. Satisfied clients come back, again and again. Keeping an existing client happy is more cost effective than attracting new customers.

“65% of a company’s business comes from existing customers, and it costs five times as much to attract a new customer than to keep an existing one satisfied.”
— Customer Service Institute

Customers are so loyal to the Apple product line, that other consumer electronic giants study and try to emulate the Steve Jobs’ industrial design mystique and Apple’s customer-centered product development process.

As Bill Gates of Microsoft can attest, an eroding customer-base is even more expensive then retaining your customer base through responsive customer service.

“91% of unhappy customers will never again buy from a company that has displeased them; they will also voice their dissatisfaction to at least seven other people.”
— Technical Assistance Research Programs Institute

Software buyers, distrustful of predatory business practices, and unhappy with product reliability, actively sought alternatives to the Microsoft product line. They found them in Linux products and web-based applications from Google. A resent business review concisely stated Microsoft’s current customer service problem, “Google is to Microsoft as Microsoft was to IBM.

Stay close to your customer base. You need them more than they need you.

Drop me a line at sbatik@mymillionairemind.org and you may see your question answered in an upcoming Blog or featured in our Millionaire Minds Forum.