I sent my husband grocery shopping the other day with a typical list including fruit for the kid's lunches and a couple of staples like bread and cheese. Given the rows of fruit to choose from, I was surprised when he unloaded a bag full of Honey Crisp apples.
Have you seen the size of these things? They've got to have the equivalent flesh of four Red Delicious on a single core because a Honey Crisp is the King of all apples; you must lift them with two hands into your shopping basket, they are THAT big.
When I asked him how much he paid for the freaks of nature that could barely fit in our fruit bowl, he said he didn't have a clue, nor did he care. He defended his purchase by stating that the Honey Crisps looked so good and so different from the others he couldn't resist buying them.
This made me think about human consumption patterns and how predictability goes out the window when any given product shines like a giant, juicy red apple. This is the challenge of every business: to be the Honey Crisp in a world of Macintoshes. If you want to boost your profits and grow your business, you need to be irresistible. In its simplest terms, here's the strategy: Set yourself and your business apart from competitors in some significant way.
No matter what business you're in, the last thing you want to be perceived as is a commodity. Why? Because people tend to buy commodities based on price alone, and that is the least profitable and least rewarding arena to play in. When you're a commodity, the only way to get clients to buy from you is to offer the lowest price, a sales method with two major downfalls. Most obvious is that lowering your prices cuts into your profit margin. Every time you lower your price, you lose valuable margin.
What's even worse, is the second negative--the customers you gained by winning them on price have almost no loyalty. As soon as they find the same product or service that you have to offer elsewhere, and at a lower price, they're "outta there."
The secret to boosting your profits and really growing your business is customer retention. You'll never score well on customer retention when you're a commodity . . . when you're exactly like all those other apples. Your repeat customers are your most profitable ones. In this world filled with apples, your challenge is to do whatever it takes to catch the customer's attention and then keep them, even if it means being a Honey Crisp and hogging all the space in the fruit bowl.
Until next time, keep in the black and keep coming back.
Jennifer Brandle-McCall is the CEO of the Prince George Chamber of Commerce. Thought leadership for this week's column provided in part by Proven Business Strategies-FocalPoint Coaching Excellence, located in Prince George.
