The type of relationship your customer wants to have with you significantly impacts your sales and operating costs

Your customer’s expectations are proportionate to the money they spend with you.  Because of this underlying truth, it is vital to understand the type of relationship your target customer desires to have with you, as the second part of answering the where question.  This is particularly true if where your place of business is conducted involves your customers interacting in person with your employees—the literal “face” of your business.

If you’re investing a lot of money to be in a particular location, and you’ve done everything you can to create an inviting environment to do business in, you may still lose a sale if your employees aren’t on board with the experience you are trying to provide for your customer.   You’d be better off dumping the physical location and doing business entirely online.  It’s essential to ensure that your employees deliver the customer experience you know is required to win over your target customer.

You best ensure you deliver the purchase experience your customers want when you understand what they expect in their purchase transaction with you.  Your customer’s buying mode determines the type of relationship they want to have with you. The more their buyer mode tilts toward relational, the higher the degree of service your target will expect as part of their business transaction.

As you think about the type of relationship your customer wants to have with you and you with them, the next question to answer is whether your target customer is willing to pay for the level of service they expect, or is it all about obtaining the lowest possible price?

When you know where your customer wants to purchase from you and what type of relationship they want to have with you, you can structure your core processes to deliver what they are buying from you in a way that your customer highly values. “Valued by your customer” means that they are willing to pay a price that allows you to make a fair return on your business’s direct and indirect costs.

Do you have the right pricing strategy for the type of expectations your customers have for you?

Charging transactional-based pricing for relational-level sales and service is one of the fastest ways to go out of business.  Failure to factor in the added costs tied to a “relational” relationship into your pricing is one of the fastest ways to run out of cash.  Click here to confirm your pricing factors in your customer’s pre and post-sales transaction expectations.

Within twenty-four hours of receipt of your P&L Statement and your sales by customer by year for the last four years, you will receive back by email your free assessment from a certified BusinessCPR™ Business Scientist on how much your misaligned sales and service expectations is costing you.