21. How can companies build strong relationships with business customers?

21.How can companies build strong relationships with business customers?
33.How do marketers identify and analyze competition?
50.How can we improve service quality?
77. How does word of mouth affect marketing success?
80.What challenges does a company face in developing new products and services?
Answers:
77. How does word of mouth affect marketing success?
In the current digital age, the incessant amount of advertising is to be expected, but luckily, we’ve trained ourselves to block out the noise. When it comes down to it, the entire buying decision process has changed over time. We often do our own research before purchasing a product, ask around to get opinions, or take the advice of influencers we trust.
Word of mouth marketing: the importance. The core reason marketers and companies seek word of mouth marketing is because of how powerful it is. If your customers are talking about a brand without provocation, that brand’s market presence, reputation, and customer base skyrockets. Because trust keeps dwindling, word of mouth marketing is the one avenue that will always be in style. Here are 3 marketing techniques.
1. Establishes brand loyalty. When someone is a brand evangelist, they go out of their way to recommend your brand to everyone they can. They love what you bring to the table and believe in your mission. Imagine how powerful it is when someone talks highly of your brand to their friends, family, and followers online. Eventually, those people will favor your brand over others. It creates a domino effect. That’s the power of word of mouth marketing.
2. Increases brand awareness, sales, and market presence without ad spend. Every business wants to get the best bang for their buck when it comes to budgeting. According to Bain & Co, it’s estimated that a 5% increase in customer retention can boost a company’s profitability by 75%.
3. It’s authentic. Now more than ever, people like authenticity.When a company capitalizes on word of mouth marketing, a community is being created around trust and authenticity rather than pressuring people to buy because it’s what everyone else is doing. It’s much more valuable to foster customer relationships that people that are genuinely interested in your product or service than to advertise to the masses in hopes that you’ll see an increase in sales. Building a community of dedicated customers works wonders when you launch new products. In short, word of mouth marketing is worth it.
50. How can we improve service quality?
Tangible products tend to have concrete specifications with objective ways to measure adherence to those specifications. The best way to improve understanding of customer needs and expectations is to increase the amount of time that members of the organization, including management, spend observing and interacting with customers. This can include customer visits and shadowing those performing front line services. Customer surveys can also be used to collect information, although surveys do not remove the need for observing and interacting with customers directly. Internally, customer personas can be built to help everyone in the organization try to visualize and understand one or more stereotypical customers. This can include information about the customer’s background, needs and expectations. Exercises can be performed where employees take turns trying to argue from the customer’s point of view. Improving performance will depend on the specific services being performed. The approaches however fall into two categories. One approach is to invest in creating service quality standards and developing rigurous training so that all employees understand how to properly perform services. It is also important for management to observe how services are being performed in order to identify gaps in service quality standards or additional training opportunities. This is often the approach selected by large organizations and when done properly it can lead to consistent service quality.
The other approach is to hire great people, work hard to retain and motivate them, coach them in areas where they need improvement, and give them the freedom to delight customers. With this approach it is particularly important for management to be intimately familiar with employees and the work they perform in order to be able to properly identify coaching opportunities. This approach can work particularly well for small organizations who may opt to do this instead of investing in standards and training. But relying solely on this approach can be difficult as the size of an organization increases. It is important to find the right balance between these two approaches.
21.How can companies build strong relationships with business customers?
Good customer relationships are based on customer experience. Research shows that just ‘satisfying’ customers isn’t enough to guarantee they’ll come back You need to go above and beyond. 1. Understand what your customers value To find out what your customers value, always listenn to what they say and how they say it—and adjust your approach to match their expectations.Some people will want a lot of personal contact with your business. Others may not be interested in getting too much attention. Some will be very price-conscious while others will be looking for all the bells and whistles. Do your best to keep listening! 2. Show you genuinely care. As a general rule, people want to connect beyond the professional level. That’s why it pays off to be friendly and personal. The key is to always be authentic. Customers can tell when you aren’t being genuine. If being a ‘people person’ isn’t your strong suit, think about hiring someone who is adapting to their pace. 3. Adapt to their pace. If a customer picks up the phone and is clearly in a hurry, don’t slow them down with small talk and pleasantries. But if a customer calls and wants to chat, make sure you don’t rush them off the phone. 4. Let your brand be your guide. Your branding and marketing make a promise about customer experience and your organization as a whole—and it’s essential to deliver on that. Make sure all your customer-facing employees are on the same page. Even if they have experience from somewhere else, they can’t approach their job the same way. They have to reflect what your organization stands for. 5. Model the behaviour you want to see. The way you treat your employees shows them how they’re supposed to treat your customers. If you’re always trying to cut costs, your employees may assume they shouldn’t be offering discounts or adding value in other ways, which can go a long way toward exceeding customer expectations. 6. Remember that relationships are built over time. While it’s important to go above and beyond, You don’t need to hit a home run with every conversation.
80.What challenges does a company face in developing new products and services?
In today's market, the long-term and trusting relationship with the customer is the key to financial prosperity and success of any company. Today, high-quality customer service is not only an opportunity to stand out from numerous competitors. For some business areas, this is the only competitive advantage. The direct participation of management of the company - this is the vital condition for improving the quality of service. It is not recommended to use high-sounding promotional offers such as - "We love our customers," if the company can not provide an individual approach to each potential client. The situation is even worse if the company's management does not believe in the possibility of creating high-quality client service system. Any actions and statements of the management should serve as the confirmation of their loyalty and commitment to the chosen strategy; Availability of sufficient financing - a company, must have appropriate resources for implementing the chosen strategy in customer care and the respective trainings; Continuous efforts to improve customer service – there is one interesting feature in sales. Namely, client care can be improved to such extend as your potential customers feel it shall be. If a customer receives a quality service, it is mirrored in the relationship to the acquired product or service. In other words, if the client is well served, he will believe that the quality of offered goods (tangible or intangible) is also at a high level. If you want to differ from companies, which sell similar products, your customer service should be better; Training and professional development of sales staff - if you have chosen a specific strategy for service, your employees should be trained in it, and know exactly how to implement it in practice. The importance of sales personnel training is the highest, but unfortunately, few companies take that fact into account. Current practice shows that a competent and highly skilled staff is the main engine of sales; The internal corporate climate of the company - trade sector requires the active engagement of all staff without exception. . No matter where one or another employee works. In this regard, it is necessary to apply the principle of universal participation in the implementation of company's strategy and apply for personnel motivational programs.
33.How do marketers identify and analyze competition?
You’re getting ready to launch a new product or program. Your mind is racing. You’ve got the green light to start your marketing plan. There’s a thousand options: social campaign, paid ads, a video series, PR campaign, ad spend, and more. Before you draft a marketing plan, do a competitive marketing analysis—a research initiative that will give you insight into how similar products are being marketed and help you to identify the best opportunities for your launch. Identify your competitors. Most marketers and salespeople talk about competitors often. When figuring out who else is in your space, you might compare similar companies based on product offerings, size, revenue, or number of customers. These types of product competitors are extremely useful when developing marketing programs, because you want to know how to position your product against your closest similar offering. Understand competitors’ marketing strengths and weaknesses. Once you know who your competitors are, it’s time to give them a little credit. They wouldn’t be your competitors if they weren’t any good, right? Analyzing your competitors’ strongest marketing programs:

1. 
   Analyzing their social media presence.
   
2. 
   Noting how they talk and write about their product.
   
3. 
   Analyze their paid media on Google Adwords.
   
4. 
   Use SEO tools to see how they are ranking on different keywords.
   
5. 
   Talk with their current or former customers about their experiences.
   

Once you complete, see if you can carry out some of these programs at your company. If your competitors had a celebrity cameo at their multi-million dollar conference, you may not be able to capture that same marketing juice. However, if they’re competing on low-cost keywords and doubling down on a content or social strategy, your team can integrate these learnings into your own strategy. Determine the competition’s weaknesses and your opportunities. Examining your competitors’ lead flow can give you some insight into how the marketing and sales teams work together. When creating your competitive market analysis, see if your competitors are:

1. 
   Collecting leads through web forms
   
2. 
   Employing a sales team (you can learn this from LinkedIn)
   
3. 
   Offering demos, free trials, or limited access to the product
   

By investigating these items, you’ll start to understand how your competitors are not only getting leads, but also acquiring customers. You can use this information to approximate their customer journey, which you can integrate into your greater strategy.
The research phase of these analyses can take time. But, they pay off many times over when you can learn from your competitors’ successes and failures.