Your business could do a lot better and here’s the secret sauce that will help…
Why do you need the secret sauce for business?
We are on the cusp of the next Industrial revolution 4.0 and this is bringing sweeping changes in our lives. Today, we are first and foremost, Consumers. Someone, somewhere, out there is right now, planning to sell you something and whether you like it or not, a good many of us part with our money, quite happily, because companies are radically re-orienting their business models to be persuasive and relevant to our needs, in the digital age.
If you’re nodding your head because your wallet feels lighter after that last online purchase, you have the right to know what’s happening here and, maybe, you could take a leaf out of these digital corporate natives to give your company the edge it needs to grow in the digital age?
In the pre-internet age, we bought stuff, consumed them and bought them again, if we liked the consumption experience.
Notice, what’s happening here? That’s not how we shop today. Our shopping preferences have been hacked. So what’s changed in the last 30 years?
Imagine, it’s the 80’s and you are the CEO of an Auto major debuting a Ford Thunderbird or a Chevrolet Camaro in the market. The tried and tested method to sell this would be to advertise the product through mass marketing (backed by a big budget, of course) and hopefully, you hit your target audiences. If you’re lucky, the target audience enters the store, buys the product (read: success) or walks away without buying the car, but either way, the relationship ends here.
Now, let’s say you closed a sale successfully and made Joe, the proud owner of a Cadillac Fleetwood, but what then? You have the basic details of the customer, but there’s so much more you don’t know.
The seller or the manufacturer has no way of figuring out – If the customer liked his product and would buy again? Has the product reached the end of its life cycle; in need of repairs or regular upgrades; is there an opportunity for a repeat sale? None of this data was possible; at least not in real time. Most businesses were built with an eye on closing the sale over building a longterm relationship, making customer engagement very limited and a one-off affair.
Before the dawn of the Internet, a company had limited levers at its disposal to influence buyer choices. Starting from product development & marketing to the end sale – there’s so much that happens between these multiple endpoints – there are a zillion ways you could lose customers and there’s probably not much you could do about it.
That’s an outdated model of marketing, sales and customer engagement that doesn’t work anymore! You’re literally waiting for the customer to make the move and hand over the cash to you! A business model that’s constantly on the lookout for new customers for its survival is a business that cannot scale or grow.
Business 101 : The Secret Sauce For Business
The cost of acquiring new customers almost always far outstrips the cost of keeping your existing customers happy, making organic growth possible and that’s the secret sauce for building a 21st century business.
Bottomline
How long do you think before a company built on a pre-internet model, folds, like a deck of cards?
Is your business able to keep up and engage with the changing tastes of the millennials or is it struggling with ballooning marketing budgets with every passing year with little to show for?
In the next edition of the blogpost, we will take a quick look at how businesses are reimagining their business models and innovating to thrive in the Internet Age. Until then, food for thought, how is your business model geared to meet the changes of the 21st century? Remember, honest answers only!