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.

Apr 10

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/

Apr 09

Creating Virtual Opportunities in Business During Lockdown

Quite a number of places had some degree of lockdown imposed on them in the light of the Covid-19 pandemic. This has sorely affected most businesses, big or small. In a previous article, we visited the possibilities of making social media a veritable tool for your business marketing and visibility. This article will discuss important steps to digitise your business.

Working from home has gained popularity over time, however, it has been a slow process. Running a virtual business has numerous benefits, not least of which is that it costs arguably less to run. Despite reservations about the idea from many, it has become a necessity for businesses to explore this mode of running a business as the restrictions to movement lingers. The following are some steps that can be followed in creating a virtual workspace.

Create Online Awareness

This is a very obvious step, so it goes right on top. For the same reason you would expect your physical business to be known around its physical location (unless you run a shady business of course 😉), your virtual business can do with online publicity. Social media remains a primary tool for this. This space gives you visibility and engagements, as has been discussed earlier.

Social media does not do it all, though. Your business needs its own private space, space where all your offerings and information can be seen. You need an up-to-date website that is easy to navigate. Websites do not personalise your business, however. For this reason, it is encouraged to run a blog also. Blogs provide a personal feeling about your business. People are more likely to patronise you if they feel there is a person behind it and not just a “mindless bot”.

Create a Business Plan

You need to identify what your business offers in terms of goods and services – what your business CAN offer. You need also to have a clear vision and set boundaries, create an effective working process, and have realistic targets. This helps you and members of your team to be able to be effective and have the best possible ROI in the shortest possible time.

Let all employees understand how working remotely differs from working in an office environment. Be selective when picking members of your team; not all are well suited for remote assignments and not all tasks can be handled by all members of your team.

Keep the Communication Line Open

This works for both customers and employees. There should be an open channel of communication across the designated hierarchy of your organisation. All members of your team should be comfortable coming up with ideas and putting them to those higher up the ladder. This gives them a feeling of belonging and drastically improves their input as they feel like a part of the system and not a misfit.

Regular meetings should also be set up. This will help to keep tabs on the progress of the team, communicate new plans to all, and maintain a personal relationship. Virtual meetings can be held using various platforms. Popular ones include Zoom, Skype for Business, Slack, Zoho Meeting, and WhatsApp.

Measure Productivity

Your business must first and foremost be productive. So you must have set down metrics to analyse the productivity of your business. Try not to only focus on the final outcome of a particular process. Evaluate various stages of the process. Use quantifiable data to measure how well you are doing. Analyse key performance indicators (KPIs) diligently and be willing to make changes to certain areas that seem to be lagging.

For every observation, you need to be willing to train members of your team to make them improve in that area. Do not stop at measuring the team as a whole, observe individual members of the team and help any such who might be behind to keep up. Make sure to have a rewards system as well as extra motivation.

Be Realistic

It will not be easy getting used to the remote working system for sure. There might be some losses along the way, maybe more. But with proper planning and determination, a virtual workspace will yield dividends. Overall, it’ll pay off!

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Aug 31

ONE KEY THING TO KNOW BEFORE TOSSE 2022

Whether you a teacher, consultant, a business owner, a sales representative, a worker in a start-up or maybe you are just a stakeholder in the education sector who just wants to attend the Total School Support Seminar/Exhibition for the experience, then this post is for you.

I know most people are busy and you need to get on to other businesses or you are probably preparing your materials for TOSSE 2022, so this post won’t take more than 2-3 minutes of your time.

You are reading this because you want to know that important thing before you attend TOSSE 2022. So here it goes: “TOSSE IS THE MARKETPLACE”.

“Is that all?” you say.

Well, yes. But there is more.

You see, TOSSE is not just any marketplace, like any platform you have ever been to, TOSSE is ‘THE MARKETPLACE’.

From the man in the suit who looks like an ordinary fellow but is the director of a major firm, to the Commissioner of Education talking to an exhibitor, to the chairman of a top school in Lagos looking for a new distributor for his school, TOSSE is the gathering of some of the biggest decision makers in the education industry.

Now, here is the aim of this post which is ‘TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE OPPORTUNITY AT TOSSE 2022’.

An event like this comes seasonally and you may never get this opportunity again till next year and the testimonies of individuals who have gotten their big breaks from past TOSSE editions are all over the place.

From the lady who attended a TOSSE seminar as a regular attendee years ago but has now grown because of that encounter to be one of this year’s speakers, to the organizations that have struck multi-million naira deals from prospects they met at TOSSE, the list is endless.

This is the reason why some individuals, companies, schools and other organizations keep attending TOSSE yearly.

For this year’s edition, we advice that you wear your best, come prepared and ready to meet and network with thousands of other attendees. You never can tell who your big break will come from.

Make sure you open yourself up to meet and build new connections, grow your network and increase your capacity as an individual or organization.

Have a wonderful TOSSE 2022 experience!