100 Great
Business Ideas
Jeremy Kourdi
ISBN: 978-0-462-09960-6
IDEA 1: Building
customer trust and loyalty
Both selling and influencing suffer from the similar misconception
that success requires you to aggressively or cleverly push a
product or idea. This misunderstanding leads to inappropriate
behaviors. For example, people can become evasive, “pushy,” and aggressive, or overly talkative and agreeable. Selling and
influencing depends on getting behavior right, by moderating
openness and assertiveness with warmth and competence.
Combined with a great product or brand, this goes a long way
to building customer loyalty.
The idea
Harley-Davidson overcame a turbulent past by building
customer loyalty – one of its most enduring assets.
It was one
of the USA’s foremost motorbike manufacturers but, by the
1980s, sales fell dramatically following tough competition from
affordable, high-quality Japanese machines. Harley-Davidson
improved quality using the production techniques of Dr. W.
Edwards Deming. The next challenge was to win back, and
maintain, market share (it now enjoys a customer loyalty rate of
90 percent).
Knowledge of customers’ needs and appealing to
customers’ emotions helped Harley-Davidson
to build trust and bond with customers. Their managers meet customers
regularly at rallies,
where new models are demonstrated. Advertising reinforces the
brand image, to promote customer loyalty. The Harley Owner’s
Group (HOG) is a membership club that entrenches customer
loyalty, with two-thirds of customers renewing membership.
Significantly, Harley-Davidson ensures customers receive
benefits they value.
The result is that customers
trust Harley-Davidson; this trust is
used to develop stronger bonds and greater profits in a virtuous
circle. Rich Teerlink, former chairman, commented, “perhaps
the most significant program was – and continues to be – the
Harley Owners Group (HOG) … Dealers regained confidence
that Harley could and would be a dependable partner … [And]
capturing the ideas of our people – all the people at Harley – was
critical to our future success.”
In practice
• Deliver customers a consistent (and ideally a “branded”)
experience each time they deal with your business.
• Be clear about the value proposition – what
you are offering
customers.
• Provide incentives for new customers to return and
reorder.
• Reward loyalty for established customers.
• Be competitive – what seems like a good deal
to you may not match your competitors.
• Make the customer’s experience as easy and
enjoyable as possible.
• Reassure customers with a reliable service and product
offer.
• Continuously improve the process, based on customer
feedback.
• Deliver reliability by working with partners and
investing in
resources.
The 99 other great business ideas
featured in this book:
2. Scenario planning
3. Making your employees proud
4. Using customer information 1
5. The rule of 150
6. Information orientation
7. Franchising
8. Eliminating waste (muda)
9. Customer bonding
10. Psychographic profiling
11. Understanding demography
12. Mass customization
13. Leading “top-down” innovation
14. Social networking and transmitting company
values
15. Achieving breakthrough growth
16. Deep-dive prototyping
17. Market testing
18. Empowering your customers
19. Cannibalizing
20. Increasing competitiveness
21. Clustering
22. Highlighting unique selling points (USPs)
23. The experience curve
24. The employee–customer–profit chain
25. Measuring employees’ performance
26. Brand spaces
27. Being spaces
28. Increasing accessibility
29. Partnering
30. Bumper-sticker strategy
31. Valuing instinct
32. Building a learning organization
33. Reinvention
34. Corporate social responsibility
35. The tipping point
36. Outsourcing
37. Keeping your product offering current
38. Experiential marketing
39. Information dashboards and monitoring
performance
40. Flexible working
41. Redefine your audience
42. Vendor lock-in
43. Turning the supply chain into a revenue chain
44. Intelligent negotiating
45. Complementary partnering
46. Feel-good advertising
47. Innovations in day-to-day convenience
48. Lifestyle brands
49. Being honest with customers
50. Instant recognizability
51. Managing a turnaround
52. Diversity
53. Balancing core and the context
54. Business process redesign
55. Convergence
56. Cross-selling and up-selling
57. Kotter’s eight phases of change
58. Business-to-business marketing
59. Employee value proposition
60. Built-in obsolescence
61. Avoiding commoditization
62. Developing employee engagement
63. Managing by wandering about (MBWA)
64. Precision marketing
65. Branding
66. Empowerment
67. Rethinking the budget
68. The buyer’s cycle
69. Direct selling
70. Age-sensitive management
71. Three-factor theory
72. Developing Islamic products
73. Support and challenge groups
74. Clear strategy
75. Six-hat thinking
76. Building business relationships
77. Learning together
78. Microfinance
79. Surviving a downturn
80. Innovation culture
81. Resource building
82. Building trust
83. Emotional intelligence
84. The balanced scorecard
85. Developing a sales culture
86. Market segmentation
87. Audacity
88. Silo busting
89. Selling online
90. Value innovation
91. Talent management
92. The leadership pipeline
93. Hardball
94. Web presence
95. Viral marketing
96. Coaching and supervision
97. User-centered innovation
98. Internal promotion and succession planning
99. Developing knowledge and intellectual capital
100. Decision making and the paradox of choice
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