How many companies have you come in to contact with today?
Think about it for a moment – you have the various businesses advertising on the television as you eat breakfast in the morning, the radio adverts pushing services.
You then have adverts in the bank when you pop in to draw out some cash, a myriad different ads online as you log in to your online mail account, and the hundreds of thousands of services which are pushed at you as you queue in the supermarket, or pop in to the shopping centre to pick something up.
One thing we are not short of in the West is business.
Everywhere we look, from the back of a local cab company right through to our shopping bag, we are invited to put our loyalty and trust in the hands of a company and use their services.
In every industry we choose to make a purchase with, we are faced with a selection of options that is enough to make us hesitate unless we know exactly what we want, and whom we want to buy it from.
This is why industries are changing.
Instead of people offering us disparate services which only answer one element of our overall purchasing requirements, more and more companies are seizing upon the idea of a holistic practice, where they offer a ‘one stop shop’ for their customers who can enter their company and get all they need from a single service provider.
Without having to shop around, we can now find a company we trust, and use them for most of our purchasing needs in a single industry for the first time.
Let’s take your local supermarket as an example.
Places like Tesco have become so huge that you can do your banking, take out insurance, pick up ingredients for a stir-fry and top up your mobile all at the same time. Other companies who are savvy enough to see that we are all stretched for time have taken this one step further – they now offer complete service packages which do everything for you, letting you simply brief them, pay your money, and sit back and watch everything happen before your very eyes, with minimal input.
As we have less and less time, this is a business model which is proving to be extremely effective.
Take for example a company that does wedding photography. More and more, we find that they are offering insurance for the big day, flower arranging, a site to view pictures, as well as the event planning itself.
These companies are realizing the benefit of offering a single portal for a wide range of services, recognizing that when someone trusts them and likes their primary service, they are more likely to come back for other services through the company.
To stay ahead of your game, is it worth broadening your sphere of business. I’m not suggesting you widen your own expertise – it’s proven that customers trust people more, in fact, when they narrow down their niche and offer one single product or service at which they excel.
However, by linking with trusted suppliers in your field of industry, and perhaps in your local area, you’re able to give your customers a truly holistic ‘one stop shop’ which saves them time and effort.
Andrew is a website builder and helps small businesses with their on-line presence…so they can grow their customer list and increase sales. That’s it! That’s what we do each and every day.
I believe a lot in the trust factor and brand power plays a major role in helping me making my decisions. For example, i would blindly trust a brand that is established even it is charging me more than its competitor.
Diversifying in related areas is good. But certain companies/ people fall prey to the concept of wanting to wet ones feet in all waters.
I’m not sure I can trust a brand just because… it’s a famous brand!
I want to know the specifics, the differences with other products.
From a general view, I can say the customers are more witty than in the past, so it’s not so easy for a brand to just sell itself.
Everybody’s searching desperately for business model innovation: Detroit, newspapers, record labels, banks. No market is left untouched, no value proposition sacrosanct.
Yet, the best business model in the world is also the simplest: make stuff that’s insanely great. Stuff that’s insanely great — amazes, enriches, and inspires. That kind of stuff doesn’t need a hard sell, a new market, or a convoluted product range. It just needs to be.
I also have the habit of trusting companies that are already established but I also agree that we shouldn’t blindly trust without researching about the company. Its important to research well about the company. Customers these days are also smarter so a brand will sell only if it satisfies the customers.
Trust is the key for me. I won’t mind paying a few extra bucks to the company I trust rather than paying less and getting a product from a company I don’t know or don’t trust.
We can’t just say yes and go for the company because of it’s good product. Sometimes it is necessary to do a little background check about the company. But this is good also if we have established a strong relationship with the company this will benefit our business. “one stop shop” sounds good and less effort spent.