Nobody wants to be replaced, but often it is a reality in your entrepreneurial world. One of the biggest imperatives for all entrepreneurs is to escape possibilities to be replaced by their customers.
Why?
Because, if you continue to experience replacement, it is the biggest sign that your business will suffer losing customers, sales, income, and profitability.
What is the Real Reason for Replacement?
Before several days, in my office come one entrepreneur with this type of problem in which he was noted that more and more customers replace his business with the competitor’s business. My first question was what he thinks about the reasons why their customers replace them with their competitors. This entrepreneur, but also many other entrepreneurs, with the same problem, usually give me the answer that the real cause of the replacement is the higher price of their products and services.
Related: How to Beat Competition in Business? 13 Steps to Beat Your Competition
This is the wrong answer. Why?
Because even the higher prices can be the real reason, often behind high prices there are many more reasons in form of root causes why they chose to replace you.
What You Can Do to Stop Replacement?
Here is my answer what entrepreneurs need to do if they do not want to be replaced from their customers and if we agree my company to consult them we will start working in the next several months to ensure that everything noted below will be incorporated in their businesses.
1. You can’t be replaced if you deliver really exceptional value to your customers.
The first thing that you will need to ensure is that you deliver really exceptional value to your customers. Almost 100% of entrepreneur immediately think about products and services that they deliver to their customer, but products and services aren’t the ones and only creators of the value that you deliver to your customers. There are many things that you can include in your total offer that will add value to your customers.
Related: How to Add Value to Your Products and Services
2. You can’t be replaced if you over-deliver what you have promised.
I now that every time when you can over-deliver what you have promised as your basic value will make more reputable and trusted a person who can’t be easily replaced. If you give something more over-delivering more than you have promised, the rule of reciprocity will take care to ensure a better future for your small business.
3. You can’t be replaced if you are continuously in touch with your current and future customers.
If you want to deliver really exceptional value to your customers and every time to over-deliver more than you have promised you will need to be as much as possible close to your current and potential customers. You need to listen to them if you want to understand their real wants and needs and then to surprise them delivering exactly what they want. If you are always close to them, you can’t be replaced because you will react in a timely manner always when you feel that some of your customers think about possible replacements.
Related: 8 Reasons Why Your Small Business is Not Profitable as You Want and How to Fix It
4. You can’t be replaced if you really worth more than what your customers need to pay you.
Your customers will always compare what they pay you for your products and service with the real worth that they receive working with your company. You need to be careful when you create and deliver your value to be easily correlated with the price that you charge. If your customers can easily relate the value to the price, they will not think about your replacement.
5. You can’t be replaced if you ensure that your customers know about your worth and the value that they will get working with you.
But, another thing is approvement that you really worth for what they pay you. If they don’t know what they receive for their money there will be probably thinking about the replacement.
For example, before several months I was talking with a friend who was not satisfied with the work of his lawyer, not because he not receive the value but, because he can’t easily discover the value that he was received from his lawyer. In this specific case, my friend as a customer, valued only how much money his lawyer save him or how much money he pays because of the decisions of the court, but he doesn’t value other possible negative consequences to him according to law that’s not in the form of money and his lawyer succeeded to avoid them.
Related: 10 Tips to Create Challenging Demand for Your Products
You need to work on ensuring that your customers will understand and know what really receive from you.
6. You can’t be replaced if you are a trusted person.
If you succeed in everything that I said before, you will probably already become highly trusted person in the eyes of your customers. When they trust you, they will not think about the possible replacement of your company with competitors.
7. You can’t be replaced if you help your customers regardless if they buy or not in a specific moment.
Except for building the company-customer relationship in today’s economy, you need to build a much better relationship. You need to be something more for your customers. Become a friend with them, a person who will help them despite the situation in which they are when they need a help. Again, the rule of reciprocity will ensure to get really great benefits for you and your small business.
Question: Do you have experience in trying to ensure that your customers can’t replace you easily?
