The best way to make money in business is to not be in business to make money.
Which is funny, because the vast majority of people who get into business do it exactly because they want to make money.
The end result? We get nice statistics like, “9/10 businesses fail”. Well, of course they fail when the sole focus is making money, and as much of it as possible!
A “business” isn’t some magical money printing machine. The money has to come from somewhere. And where does it come from? The customers! The customers are the ones who pay money to buy a product or service that you offer.
So instead of focusing on making some “business” that just generates money (which is impossible), why don’t we focus on the people who have the potential to make us money? Why don’t we focus on the customer?
Businesses built with the customer in mind make money. Businesses built with the founder’s bank account in mind will—in the vast majority of cases—fail miserably.
The best way to be successful is to listen to those you’re trying to sell to. Because they’ll tell you exactly what they want. They will literally tell you what they will pay for. Then if you provide that to them, guess what? They’ll pay for it!
This is the easiest AND most profitable way to run business!
Introducing the NPS Score
So the question now is, how can we shape our business direction to match what the customer wants? Fortunately, there’s a handy little metric we can use to determine exactly what the customer is looking for: the NPS score.
The NPS score revolves around one question, posed to the customer: would you recommend this company to someone else?
The customer is then asked to rate their answer on a 0-10 scale. A zero means the customer absolutely HATED the business, a 10 means they would recommend it to anyone and everyone they know.
The idea is simple. Ask each and every one of your customers this question. Then, collect all their answers. Once you reach a large number of answers, simply determine the average rating. This is your NPS score.
Now, let’s break it down:
0-6: This is a negative score. Customers who rate your business a 0-6 did not like their experience, will NOT recommend your business, and will actually—in most cases—recommend people never use it!
7-8: This is the “neutral” level. These customers had a normal, everyday experience at your business. It wasn’t bad, they won’t be complaining. But they’re not going to be in a hurry to recommend it to anyone they know.
9-10: Lastly, we have the ravers – the ideal customers. These people LOVE your business. They will continue to give you money and will recommend you to anyone and everyone who needs what you can offer.
By figuring out the NPS score, you can immediately get a good direction for where your company should be headed. Obviously, the most successful companies will have an NPS score of 9-10 (this is excluding MASSIVE chain stores, where the customer shops not for the quality of service reasons, but for pure convenience).
9-10 customers are your ticket to business success. Because not only will they buy your products, again and again, they can also be up-sold. And not only will they buy those products, they’ll also recommend their friends and family buy them as well.
Essentially, customers who are 9’s and 10’s are mini-marketing machines.
Once you have your NPS score, determine the next moves for your company. If the majority of your customers are 9-10, congratulations – you’re doing incredible.
If the majority are 0-6, clearly you’re failing in some large area. So the next step is to identify where that area is, then implement programs to fix it.
Lastly, if you have customers in the 7-8 range, you’d be surprised how easy it is to get them into the 9-10 range. How do you do this? Simply go the extra mile. If customers want to return something, make that as easy as possible. If they want customer service, don’t make them wait on hold – pick up right away.
Make little changes that no other business is doing, and you’ll get customers like no other business has.
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