7 REASONS WHY CUSTOMERS ARE NOT BUYING YOUR COMPANY'S PRODUCTS.

 SEVEN REASONS WHY CUSTOMERS ARE NOT BUYING YOUR COMPANY’S PRODUCTS.

1.     MANAGEMENT DOES NOT REGARD SALES AS IT’S No. 1 PRIORITY.

Your company may be an Engineering or Manufacturing Company. Management therefore regards Manufacturing as the reason for it’s existence. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. The reason for your Company’s existence is the Customer.

Manufacturing is a Means to an End. The End here being the customer.

Untill your Management understands that we are : “First and Foremost a Sales Company”, irrespective of weather you are in Audit/Accountancy, Engineering or Human Resources Department, your company’s products will fall behind in the market place-because both management and staff do not see sales as it’s topmost priority.

And because Management and staff do not prioritize sales and marketing, there’s going to be a situation whereby your company’s management and staff is not well organized to carry out effective -marketing. Non-Sales staff carry on with an attitude of: “Sales is not my job or Am not in Sales Department”. Consequently, there’s a Lack of Sales Culture in the length and breadth of the company, which reflects in low sales.

Even a Pharmaceutical and Drugs Manufacturing Company is a sales company because they are in existence for the customers. No Customers, No Pharmaceutical Company. No Customers. No Business. This piece of truth is applicable, irrespective of the nature of your business.

 All Departments of your Company must be made to support the Sales and Marketing Department . . . ELSE Sales Suffers.

Promotion of a Sales Culture throughout the Company will impact positively in the market place.

2.     LACK OF  A CLEARLY DEFINED COMPETITIVE-ADVANTAGE IN THE MARKET PLACE.

Ask your self. If I was not working for this company, would I buy my company’s products? Meaning? Why would potential customers buy my company’s products and not from the competition? Your product resembles your competitors products. There is no differentiation between what you offer and what the competition is offering.

Customers buy for THEIR OWN REASONS NOT YOURS.

Customers and Potential Customers buy due to: 1) Quality;  2)Price-this includes discount and terms of payment;  3)Fast Delivery/Operational Efficiency ; 4)Packaging/Aesthetics ; 5)Maintenance/After-Sales Support/Warranties, 6)Customer Intimacy or Customer Relationship, etc.

If your Company does not meet any of the above 6-reasons, it will be a looser in the market square.

3.     YOUR COMPANY DOES NOT SNIFF THE COMPETITION.

Your Organization does not monitor its Competitors.

Therefore your company does not have products or product-categories that are either better or at least similar to the competition.

4.     POOR MARKET SEGMENTATION.

Your Company does not have a clearly defined market segment.

It’s like a case of: “If you don’t know where you are going, any road can lead you there”.  

For instance, if a company is into clothes manufacturing, the Organisation should define if it is focusing on Women clothing or Men clothing or Children clothing or Clothing for Teenagers or Corporate Wears’ or Casuals or Babies Wear, Mass market or Elitist-market, etc.   Marketing should not be a  case of Jack of all trades and master of none. In the Labour market, individuals who are specialists in their respective professions are more in demand and command higher income that general practitioners-E.g. in the medical profession. Similarly; in business,  Studies have shown that Specialist-firms who have a clearly defined target market do better in the market place than jack-of-all-trades companies.

5.     YOUR COMPANY DOES NOT CREATE NEW MARKET OPPORTUNITIES.

This is largely due to lack of creative thinking.

A Company should use personal or group creativity to  search  for a Need in the market place and meet such need in a way that it will be profitable to the Company.

E.g. “Artificial Plants”, are plants that do not wither.  Corn cereal can be produced in the form of a Snackbar that can be taken at anytime of the day-even when you are driving a car behind the wheels.

In addition to creating new product-categories, a company needs to  create new market opportunities by opening up new sales channels.

For example, If you are selling Stabilizers to banks, nothing stops you from selling the same product to Telcos or Oil Firms.

6.     A WEAKS SALES AND MARKETING DEPARTMENT.

If your Sales and marketing team is weak in the following areas: 1)Poor  Product Knowledge; 2) Poor Knowledge of Competitive-Products; 3) Late Product Deliveries; 4)Inadequate Handling of  Customer Complaints; 5)Ignoring Details-Do you remember how angry you were when your tailor used navy-blue buttons instead of brown buttons on your cream-coloured suit or dress? It created a colour-mismatch. Details are more important to your customers and clients than we think. 6)Not Closing the Deal-due to poor training; 7)Poor Customer Relationship Management –You’ve got to show the customer that you see him/her as a friend and not just as a piece of statistics or a piece of transaction; 8) Poor Competitive intelligence-gathering; 9)Inappropriate categorization of customers and potential customers. You’ve got to determine if  a potential client need’s or can afford your product before approaching them. You also need to understand that big company customers-aka blue chip companies does not necessarily mean big profit for you. Big companies and blue chip companies are notorious for requesting rock bottom prices. 10) Poor Time Management; 11) Poor Salaries, Lack of Incentives, Poor Sales Commission, etc. If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys as your workers and sales people. Sales and Marketing People are the foot soldiers of any company. And any army that has  poorly motivated footsoldiers is bound to suffer defeat at the war front; 12) Poor Sales Management. Sales People are basically people oriented and not numbers oriented. Therefore, SalesPeople are interested in making sales, they are not interested in numbers. They are not interested in knowing the “Cost of Sales-i.e, how much it cost the company to produce a Sale or what is called Return on Investment- ROI”. Monitoring Cost of Sales is the job of an efficient Sales Director or Sales Managers. . . And the List continues.

7.     INTERDEPARTMENTAL RIVALRY.

Interdepartmental rivalry is worse than competitors rivalry in the market square.

Engineering and Production Departments should be made to understand the operations of the Sales/Marketing teams and vice versa.

Accountants and Auditors should be made to understand the operations of the Sales/Marketing teams and vice versa.

Operations and Logistics Departments should be made to understand how late deliveries damage the company’s reputation in the market place. Sales and Marketing People should equally understand that they need to place orders early with the Operations/Logistics Department in order to avoid late deliveries-especially for out-of-stock items.

Rev’d. Fabian Edemeko Udoh is a Fellow of Institute of Certified Sales Professionals of Nigeria, a Fellow of Chartered Institute of Project Management, a Chartered Member of Computer Professionals Registration Council of Nigeria and a Member of Nigeria Computer Society. He is based in Abuja-Nigeria.