Many businesses, whether big or small, like startups or franchises, often face a common problem. This problem makes it hard for customers to have a good experience, puts stress on sales teams, and makes billing more complicated than it needs to be.
It usually starts with a simple idea, focused on the main message of the business. But over time, businesses tend to add more services or products, sometimes without a clear reason. This makes things more complicated.
They end up offering too many things, which takes away from their main services. This can cause problems like making it harder for customers to get what they want and making things less simple for their regular customers.
All of this can lead to a drop in sales, unhappy customers, and if it goes on for too long, losing customers to competitors.
Why Do Businesses Stray From Simplifying Their Services?
Lots of startups and businesses often fall into a trap. They try too hard to copy what their competitors are doing or believe that having more products or services will automatically boost their sales. This happens a lot in franchises, where they try to outdo each other with better perks and even different names for their products or services.
The constant need to come up with something new and make sure people remember them can lead businesses to keep changing things and offering new stuff. This can take their focus away from the great services they already provide.
Furthermore, if a business tries to change its brand or messaging too drastically, it can confuse or upset its customers. This can lead to big problems, including negative public relations issues.
What Can Be Done to Maintain a Balanced Service Offering and Customer Experience?
Start with breaking down barriers for your current customer base. If a startup, a vital part of any customer experience strategy right after mapping how customers find you is how easy it is for those potential customers to purchase first, purchase well (best fit for their needs), and purchase again.
Start to build key messaging around how your startup fills a need better than what is currently available and how your services are more accessible to utilize than anyone else. Part of that key messaging should include a commitment to consistency and reliability with systems that continuously offer simplistic processes.
Strategies for Startups and Businesses in a Changing Market
As a startup, you are taking market share from others for a reason. When growth happens, remember what first propelled that growth.
For an existing business through the startup phase, the magic happens when simplicity can be maintained. New employees must be hired through launch and scale, and additional layers and systems are established.
It is so easy to build layers that have added complications. With each layer, a founder or CEO must understand that it represents another wall between the customer base and revenue.
While it is true that only some employees are customer-facing and even revenue-generating, their importance in keeping the business streamlined, simplistic, and consistent matters as much as hitting sales goals or keeping accounting up to date.
There will always be a need to innovate, better serve an existing customer base, and maintain market share in an ever-increasingly volatile market. Constant change will remain consistent.
However, that does not mean that every brand’s reaction to change is a change of its own. Depending on the market segment, consistency may be the best, most profitable strategy to stand out in the loud noise of change from competitors.
In business, and frankly, in life, there is sometimes nothing easier than reacting to change with more change. Change occurs for no reason, an impulse to change for the sake of change (without strategy), or change because someone (likely a competitor) is changing or revamping their offerings to the market.
Just because someone else is taking off on change for the sake of change does not mean your business should also change. Best steps first map or remap your customer experience strategy.
Use Simplicity as a Sales Strategy
Don’t try to please everyone. This is something people say a lot, but it’s often forgotten. If your startup or existing business is doing well because you have a clear message, a loyal group of customers who support your brand, and you’re growing as a market leader in your field, don’t change what’s working. Make it a selling point in your sales strategy.
Sometimes, sales tactics and selling points end up sounding like a long encyclopedia entry rather than a simple list of solutions. Even worse, the services you offer are just rehashed versions of what’s already available, making things more complicated and not setting your brand apart from the competition.
Summary
A simplified sales strategy, which covers the sales process, the products or services you offer, and how easy it is for customers to buy and get support, is not very common. Remember the last time you had to contact a huge Fortune 500 call center or use online support.
If the experience your brand provides to customers is better than what your competitors offer, make sure to highlight it in your sales efforts! Many people have been unhappy with the service they’ve received from other companies in the past, but this is often underestimated as a selling point in sales.
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