About the Article Series GEMS
Friends, this is a practical and Hands-on article series to Grow YOUR BUSINESS. This will have explanations on getting and retaining customers. Each article will have some exercises for you. If you do them and apply to your business – Growth is a Guarantee. All the best!

Before I begin, let me ask you a question: How many of you believe that ‘Selling and Marketing’ is important for your business?
If your answer is affirmative to my question, read along – I promise this will help you GROW your Business. We have often heard / used these words: Selling and Marketing. But, at times we confuse them with one another. For an entrepreneur, it is important to understand them to be able to use them.

Imagine a laundry service which most of us use daily or occasionally. What are our expectations of a laundry
business?

• Good quality washing and ironing of clothes.
• Timely delivery + pick up.
• Proper folding / Packing.
• Reasonable price.
• He should take care of our clothes.
• Should not mis-place them
• Should accept different modes of payment (e.g. digital payment)
• He / she should have good manners. A smile may go a long way : )
  We can keep listing and expand the list, but I want to drive your attention to something else.
  Let us imagine you are a regular customer at this Laundry. Think of extra / special needs you may have? For example:
  Will it happen that sometimes you are in a hurry and need clothes to be washed, pressed and delivered in a very
  short time?
• You have special apparel and need to be washed in a particular way with proper care.
• You have your favourite shirt which has a small cut or a missing button and it needs a minor repair.
  Now, in the above cases, how does your laundry person reacts / responds and deliver the value that you are expecting? Does he/she go beyond ‘Call of Duty’?
• Like in case of an urgent delivery, he is in touch with you on sms / WhatsApp about the state of the clothes,
• or he proactively offers you a minor stitching service when he observes a cut on your piece of cloth.
• We spoke about ‘quality’: Have you observed some the laundry men insert a small sheet of paper in the cloth fold?
  Sometimes this paper is of brown colour or butter paper. It feels good while taking out this paper. It feels like someone has taken real care in treating your clothes, like the clothes are new again. Right?
  Don’t you think the above explains the first block? Marketing is understanding and satisfying customers

The Exercise: For your business can you list out the following?

1. Who is my customer?
2. What are his / her / their needs, issues, concerns, problems?
3. What can I do to create customer delight? (That is going beyond their expectations?)
   Treat 1,2,3 as your homework till we meet next month.
   I will be glad if you wish to write me your responses on: abhay@nivagrowth.co