4 Core Principles of Customer Relation That Fuel Business Growth

Customer relation is a way business relates to its customers, clients and patrons. Some organizations hire people specifically to manage how the company interacts and communicates with people. The goal is to retain existing customers and to gain new ones by providing the best customer relation and client services.

Companies in all industries and all of sizes understand that customers are perhaps their most valuable asset. Improving the overall customer experience is vital for continued success and survival, and always has to be.

There are some core principles to relationship management that any company can and should follow:

Communication: Listening is just as important as telling. Think about how often you actually speak with your customers. Focus on less financial-driven communication (whether it’s e-mail, phone call or face-to-face interaction) if you make your customers feel involved, they feel as though they actually have a stake in your company, and feel like you care more than just trying to make sales.

Rewards: Every company should initiate and make provision for reward programs. It is a very simple form of saying “Thank you” and particularly it is a viable and measurable marketing tool that big companies and small businesses can use to retain their customers and grow their business.

Be flexible: Be quick and attentive to customer’s complaints: The objective of customer relation is typically to interact with the customers in order to answer questions, resolve support issues, establish credibility and nurture relationships.

Here are strategies that Improve Customers Relations and building customer’s loyalty, from simply opening up communications channels to implementing elaborate point systems that reward loyalty enhanced customer communications;

  • Providing customer feedback forms
  • Asking about customer needs in general when customer calls with problems
  • Training call-center staff to handle disputes
  • Encouraging a service culture throughout the organization.

How To Build Efficient Trade Show Follow Up Emails

During a major Exhibition event like TOSSE, optimism and motivation are through the roof. You talk with lots of people, receive valuable feedback and hear promises of future orders.

But as the trade show ends and you return to your office, what happens?

On an average, it takes 5 working days to follow up on potential customers. . In many cases, there is no follow up at all and the business cards end up in a folder somewhere.

Exhibitions are resources consuming hence, it’s important to maximize gains immediately.

Follow up emails must start with instant follow up – the best way to do this to send a “thank you” message. Just after your discussion, send a short email with basic background information, making sure that your potential customers remember you.

Continue with thorough follow up – send in personalized messages that reminds them of your business and answers their business questions.

Make follow up emails Stand out – leaverage on the conversation you had with your potential customers in the stand, make them know you care.

Record Customer data using the right business tools – this simplifies you email dispatch and helps you understand the chronology of your data. There are various online tools like myfairtool.

All this process will succeed in helping you transition efficiently from trade show setting to daily business schedule and activities.

Finnpartnership

Finnpartnership: Business partnerships for a better world

According to the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report, Finland has the world’s best-developed education system in the world. Hence, any educational program from the country is one to be held in the highest regard.

Finnpartnership is a business partnership programme financed by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland and managed by Finnfund. Finnpartnership aims to generate positive development impacts by promoting business between Finland and developing countries. 

Societal functionality and development ultimately depend on how citizens, companies and societal operators are able to make society function. Finnpartnership activities aim to accelerate this development.

In practice, Finnpartnership promotes business activities and partnerships with the aim of generating positive development impacts in the target country. As the business to be promoted must also be profitable and responsible, the activities ideally create a cycle that reinforces positive development.  

The main services are Business Partnership Support and Matchmaking

In many ways, developing countries are different operating environments from those Finnish companies are accustomed to. In addition, the conditions between countries and within them can vary greatly.

There are usually more questions than answers when visiting a foreign country for the first time. Finnpartnership offers funding, contacts and advisory services, which can be used to assess business opportunities in developing countries. 

Business Support Partnership is financial assistance for researching business opportunities. Match-making connects operators in Finland and developing countries with one another. The services are intended for companies, educational institutions, non-governmental organisations and other operators.  

Team Finland assembles all of Finland’s state-funded internationalisation services in a single place. Through Team Finland, you are able to obtain information on markets and their risks, funding for internationalisation, opportunities to participate in missions promoting exports, and contacts, information and advisory services.

Team Finland will be at the Total School Support Seminar/Exhibition (TOSSE) set to hold on the 1st and 2nd of September in Lagos, Nigeria, to help as many institutions as possible through its solutions to help develop their system. Click here to register for the event.

How Likely Are You to Buy from Yourself – Thinking Like The Customer

Marketing your business has evolved over time. Apart from the traditional methods of marketing, one way to get a proper marketing strategy is by getting into the mind of the consumer. Let us do a little exercise to help do this.

Everyone is familiar with role-playing games. Let’s do a little role play now: You are the customer and you want to purchase an item or service from your franchise. Be completely honest, will you be willing to sanction the purchase? There are a few parameters you can use to evaluate this. Ask yourself the following questions:

  • How easily did I find the product?
  • How does the product compare with other competitors in the market?
  • Is there any benefit from further patronage?
  • How good is the customer service?
  • Does the product keep up with recent technological trends?

The idea of this exercise is to make you understand exactly the thought process of the consumers. This will give you a basis to work with a  better strategy.

Reverse-Engineer Your Findings To Your Benefit

After going through the process of getting into the consumer’s mindset, you most likely would find areas where improvements or adjustments can be made. You would find that you would be able to understand your customers better. This will help you to be able to tailor your correspondence to them in the future.

Showcase Your Product/Service At Africa’s Biggest Education Tradeshow & Conference 

If you can see yourself on the same level as your customers you can better drive customer loyalty and develop the trust that is so important these days and it humanizes your company and enhances your marketing capability. In the end, you will be able to anticipate your customer’s needs because you are thinking just like them. It will put you in the best spot to market with confidence.

Support your Alma mater by sponsoring teachers to TOSSE 2020.

 

We all desire to see consistent, strategic improvement in our Alma mater, so as to keep the banner of our alma mater flying higher than ever. This is why we are encouraging old school students of legacy schools in Nigeria to make a definite impact in improving the educational infrastructures as well as personnel development in their alma mater.

The gift of education was once given to us all, now it’s time to give back to our alma mater, to strengthen it, reinvigorate it so that more children can be educated and more success stories can be created.

This is our reason for believing that old students of legacy schools in Nigeria can help to restore the glimmer and hope that their alma mater once was to students, so as to contribute to the improvement of  quality education in their alma mater and to also inspire the current crop of learners that quality education matters.

The Total School Support Seminar and Exhibition (TOSSE) presents an opportunity for old students to make their impact felt in their respective Alma mater. TOSSE is an educational event that has produced amazing results in teacher trainings through extensive educational seminars and workshops which has greatly improved the quality of teaching personnel in the educational sector of the country.

TOSSE is also the biggest education event in Africa, with an impressive attendance of 7000 guests and exhibitors from all over the world in TOSSE 2019. It is a worthwhile event where parents, teachers, students, NGOs and educational facilitators meet to grow, network and advertise their schools.

The TOSSE 2020 promises to be even better with several insightful programmes like: Teachers Leadership Seminars, IT training for teachers and three Master class teacher training sessions which would imbue and certify teachers with the knowledge they need to compete favourable with their counterparts’ home and abroad.

This is a window of opportunity for old students to actively support and sponsor teachers of their old school to acquire modern teaching knowledge and leadership skills in TOSSE 2020 Master class sessions, which is focused on training millennial teachers who would make education in Nigeria, a revered profession.

There are several other advantages of supporting and sponsoring teachers of your alma mater to TOSSE 2020, aside from knowledge acquisition, attendance at TOSSE event places schools on the educational map of Nigeria, so they can create networks that would help the school grow and develop in the educational sphere of Nigeria.

Make your Alma mater proud again by supporting and sponsoring your old school’s teachers and educators to ensure that the future of your alma mater remains bright.

 

Don’t Just Be At Trade Show To Make Up The Numbers, Be There To Make A Business Impact.

Trade shows and exhibitions are not for everyone. Before deciding to invest in a trade show, you must answer certain questions to safe-guide your time and money investment.

Ensure that the Expo focus align with your target industry and you have developed the right service/product that is required by the audience. Review all activities to be in-line with your business niche.
Failure to thoroughly review the relevance of event to business niche, may lead investors into bad decision making. Getting clarity about your trade show investment would also make it easy for the sales team to chart a rewarding plan for their activities, generate leads and evaluating performance.

Team succeeds by setting SMART goals that would guide them through strategic sales outing; they need to be prepared and equipped with products knowledge and know what to present, where to present it and how to present it.

Don’t just be at a trade show or exhibition to make up the numbers, be there to make a business impact.

 

Ask about the objective of the trade show to check if it aligns with your business goal?  research before setting SMART goals. Why are you spending money, resources and valuable time to attend a show? The ROI must be realistic and measurable.

Define your objective and stick with it. Why is your organisation attending the event?:
For Publicity.
• To build awareness.
• To showcase or unveil new product.
• To generate lead from the trade show.
• To connect and network with other industry professionals or vendors in your business line.

 

Are you looking for a market to exhibit your product/service in 2020? Click here to learn more about The Total School Support Seminar/Exhibition (TOSSE 2020). Africa’s biggest Education trade show and conference. 

 

How To Build Efficient Trade Show Follow Up Emails

During a major Exhibition event like TOSSE, optimism and motivation are through the roof. You talk with lots of people, receive valuable feedback and hear promises of future orders.

But as the trade show ends and you return to your office, what happens?

On an average, it takes 5 working days to follow up on potential customers. . In many cases, there is no follow up at all and the business cards end up in a folder somewhere.

Exhibitions are resources consuming hence, it’s important to maximize gains immediately.

Follow up emails must start with instant follow up – the best way to do this to send a “thank you” message. Just after your discussion, send a short email with basic background information, making sure that your potential customers remember you.

Continue with thorough follow up – send in personalized messages that remind them of your business and answer their business questions.

Make follow up emails Stand out – leverage on the conversation you had with your potential customers in the stand, make them know you care.

Record Customer data using the right business tools – this simplifies you email dispatch and helps you understand the chronology of your data. There are various online tools like “myfairtool”.

All this process will succeed in helping you transition efficiently from trade show setting to daily business schedule and activities.

https://tosse.ng/tosse-visitor-information/visitors-registration-form/

How to Attract The Media To Your Stand At Trade Shows

The main objective of exhibiting your business at trade shows is capturing leads to acquiring new business and brand awareness. However, attracting the media to your stand is certainly the best way to achieve such objective, but how do you achieve this?

Prepare Media Kit

To get the media to talk about your products, the first thing to do is to provide them with valuable contents. Unless your company is very famous or your news incredibly powerful, journalists won’t spend time searching for information and material to talk about you. You must provide them with everything, make it easy for them.

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What should my Media Kit contain?

A good Media Kit contains the following information:

  • Company introduction
  • Company factsheet (figures, facts, graphs – key elements about your business that make it worth talking about)
  • Company timeline (your historic, major dates and milestones)
  • Major products / services / innovations introduction
  • Bio of the founder / CEO / key employees
  • High-resolution Photos and Logos (a good article always comes with a photo, if you don’t provide it, you risk losing control over your content or losing the article altogether)

The strategy is to always provide something very short to give a quick overview with links to find out, make it easy to grasp your documents within seconds, don’t lose your reader in pages of text.

Build your story

Most companies have no story to tell, hence no PR coverage.

Unless you have some incredible innovation to share or an internationally famous brand, why would people talk about you?

You need to have a story that will captivate your audience.

The story can be about your company and what it stands for or about your CEO or founder on his own journey or unique personality.

VISITOR INFORMATION

Make use of PR (Press Release)

Write a Press Release announcing that you will be exhibiting at the show. Make it bold. Use your story as the backbone of your release and add some suspense into it. Talk about innovation, announcement, exclusive information, etc.

If your press release is boring, don’t even bother publishing it. It would have no impact and would only waste your time. Write something worth reading that makes people (and media) want to come pay you a visit.

Once written, publish your PR and relay it through your own networks (website, Social Media, blog, newsletter, etc.), send it to journalists within your network and invite your partners to help you spread it.

Prepare Question & Answer Forms

You did everything right and some journalists stop by your booth, well done!

Then what?

They start talking to your staff. Your team members have been trained for capturing leads and educating visitors, but do they have a clue on how to handle media? Most probably not.

You will certainly ask them to direct journalists to you, but what if you’re not here or the journalist has no time to wait?

Prepare a Q&A sheet for internal purpose. This sheet should contain the top 10 questions you expect journalists to ask about your business and the “correct” answers your staff should be giving.

Use this document to standardize your numbers (you don’t want a person to claim a number and another one say something different) and make sure everyone is on the same page. Distribute this Q&A document and tell your team to read it and memorize it carefully

YOU ARE READY FOR THE TRADESHOW

HIGHLIGHTS OF TOSSE2018

How to Harness the Power of Social Media at Trade Shows

We may continue to dispute the true power of social media as a professional marketing tool, but there is little doubt that it remains an incredibly effective way of driving your business forward. This applies to all aspects of business promotion, including offline marketing methods such as attending trade shows and exhibitions, as social media can help to drive consumers to your event and create a buzz around your entire brand.

With this in mind, how can you harness the full power of social media to create a memorable and productive trade show? Consider the following: –

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Prepare Thoroughly and Access Social Media Prior to the Event

Preparation is crucial if you are to successfully utilise social media at a trade show, primarily because it enables you to promote your event and create interest around your brand. By sharing updates and information through an integrated online profile including sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest, you can alert your audience well advance of the exhibition in question. When using Twitter, you should also remember to include your official brand name a unique hashtag for the event in every communication.

Focus on the Quality rather than Quantity of your Posts

During the show, it is often tempting to subject your followers to a barrage of updates and tweets. This can easily disorientate the customer, however, while also increasing the risk of issuing bland content that is poorly structured or grammatically incorrect. To avoid this, you should focus on creating quality updates rather than producing them in high volume, using creative and engaging content that seeks to drive traffic at specific times of the day.

Post Pictures and Videos While Embracing Multimedia Resources

If you have invested heavily in creative banners and colourful display panels for your trade show, it is crucial to utilise these through audio-visual media and images. These eye-catching design elements can be extremely effective in enticing potential customers, especially if they are shared in real-time through a number of visual social media sites. By sharing this media across high traffic sites such as Pinterest and YouTube, it is possible to narrate a theme throughout the day and enable your customers to share in an interactive trade show experience.

With this in mind, the content of your videos and imagery is also important, so be sure to capture different elements of the day to convey a genuine experience to customers.

APPLY FOR A STAND HERE