Have you heard the saying that customer is always right? Of course, who hasn’t? Well, that’s wrong. The customer isn’t always right. The customer doesn’t always know what they want.
Here are some tips that will save you from pulling out your hair or banging your head on the wall when dealing with customers. This way you can focus your time on things that will actually make you money.
Not every customer is a customer you want to have
Customers get to pick who they want to do business with. They can shop around, test different products, and decide which business they want to buy from. You, as the business owner, can do the same thing.
I want you to start thinking differently than the majority of businesses. You don’t have to work with everybody. If a customer is giving you headache after headache, you don’t have to work with them, especially if you are a small business that’s trying to grow with limited resources. If 90% of your customers love your products and keep coming back to buy more and more, while 10% of the customers are the reason why you can’t sleep at night, you simply need to fire those 10% of your customers. These 10% are the same people who, believe it or not, will never be happy no matter how above and beyond you go for them. They are the people who want everything for nothing. We all know this type of customers. So make your life easier by firing them.
The best thing to do is to politely tell the customer, “I don’t think this is working out. If you would like to continue working with us, you can buy our products, but you’ll have to buy them as-is. If not, I recommend you find somebody else to work with.”
Some of you might be thinking, what if you need that other 10% of the revenue? Well, what will usually end up happening is after you send that email to (or have that conversation with) the customer to let them know you don’t need them as a client anymore, you will have the upper hand. The majority of this kind of customers will continue buying from you like normal, and they’ll stop being so crazy. Then you’ll see that your revenue will probably go up, as now you won’t be wasting your time on unprofitable things. You will now be able to focus your energy on making sure that your current customers are getting the best services possible. You will also be able to get the time and focus to find other profitable customers.
The customer doesn’t always know what they want
People will criticize your business idea as if it’s the dumbest thing they have ever heard in their life, until you become successful. Then they’ll come back to you, and ask you to give them your product for free because now all of a sudden they need it.
Don’t judge what people want from what they say with their mouths. There is only one way to tell if people want your product – by looking at the dollars. You can go out and show a hundred random people your new product idea, and ask them to raise their hands if they like it. You’ll probably see something like 85 of the people raising their hands, saying, “I love your new product idea!” Pretty good, right? If 85% of the people love your product idea, you’re probably going to kill it with this business idea, right? But hold on. Now tell those 85 people with their hands up, “Great! We actually have 85 products with us in stock right now that you can buy today!” Now you’ll see those hands drop like rocks.
Hence, test groups, surveys and what people say with their mouth are unreliable. You really need to see how many people are actually opening up their wallets in exchange for your product, because people don’t really know what they want.
You cannot cater to everyone
There are over 7 billion people in the world. A lot of these people, sorry to say, don’t care or have no use for what you’re trying to sell. So stop trying to please them. Instead, try focused marketing. Choose a niche that you want to cater to, as that will allow you to grow from a small product idea to a well-established business with good revenue stream in time.
If you want to learn how to effectively choose a profitable niche for your new business, you can read my other free article on that by clicking here.