Six ways to win & keep customers

Keep the business plan and relationships relevant to market conditions

Since the beginning of the recession, Design + Industry’s Hunter has had to rewrite his business plan twice, redesigning the business to adapt to market conditions. Fees had to be kept on hold, payment terms extended and sales targets reduced, for example. By October 2008, Hunter had to pull the plug on several projects to ensure the company avoided too much risk.

“We had to deal with the times,” he says. The belt tightening did not include ignoring business leads sparked before the GFC.

Hunter met New York-based design company Smart Design before the market crash. The companies were introduced through an Austrade introduction to work on a joint venture to develop a range of healthcare consumer products. The relationship continued with Design + Industry keeping ties as close as possible through simple habits such as weekly hour-long updates, sharing notes on projects and, says Hunter, “caring”.

The approach has paid off. In 2009, Design + Industry has signed a $10 million joint venture with firm Smart Design to develop a range of healthcare consumer products, with combined manpower of more than 125 designers and engineers. “It’s about driving the relationship, and driving it and driving it,” he says.

Be honest about whether the target customer is right for your products and services

Entrepreneur Bill Lang has a very clear idea of his pool of customers, people looking for business improvement. His business Bill Lang International sells a suite of sales development, management, financial advisory products and services to major public and private companies. More than 30,000 employees worldwide use his Scores on the Board system.

Lang’s potential clients are typically “ambitious executives with financial incentives to build high performance businesses”; others are looking for leadership development or training for sales teams. New business for Lang still comes from word-of-mouth. Wood says that pretty quickly a new lead will show whether they are interested in his business.

The GFC has reminded Lang that some clients simply don’t have the budget for training and consulting services he offers. “There is nothing you can do when a manager hasn’t got a budget,” he says.

See the positives

Design + Industry’s Hunter sees some positives to this recession (the fourth downturn for his business in 22 years). “It has brought us back to reality,” he says. Talented designers have returned to Australia and are back in the local sector, recruitment agencies are no longer sending out below-par talent for local design roles and internationally, the trend for major manufacturers to have their own internal industrial design teams has stopped. More firms are outsourcing again which means more business for Design + Industry.

Hoffmann agrees that it pays to stay positive. He keeps telling his customers about the historically low airfares, travel deals and strong Australian dollar.

“The biggest mistake is to go into paralysis,” says Hoffmann. Signs for 2010 are looking good too. At an October 2009 travel expo Hoffmann attended, 3,000 people turned up with 495 customers making a deposit on a trip. With a recent two-for-one business deal, Hoffmann alerted a corporate client who hadn’t travelled for awhile and they ended up booking three seats, taking advantage of rock-bottom fares.

Bill Wood’s consultancy is also thriving in tough times. He rejects the notion that there is nothing businesses can do in tough times. “If I am the captain of the yacht I can do nothing about the weather, tides or the size of the waves, but as captain of the yacht I can do a lot about the setting of the sails,” he says. “Business builders understand that there is a lot that is within their control.”