For the last few months, I am observing a tendency of lowering the prices of products among business owners. We all know that this is a tough time and a tougher time is coming in our way. People are not buying randomly. The buying habits of people have got a real beating, due to COVID-19, and we the business owners are trying to lower our prices, to attract sales.
The market is already pretty dry and on top of that, the arrival of new businesses and solopreneurs into various industries is making things complicated. They are selling their products at minimal prices to get a hold of the market. To fight this scenario, we are thinking that we have only one solution. To lower our prices and match our competitors.
I think this is not the right way of thinking, it shows our laziness in our thought process. The person who needs to buy a product will buy the product anyway. The tendency to buy anything is not only dependent on the prices.
Yes, we know that this is a tough time, but our aim should be to prepare ourselves for the harder times ahead. Lowering our prices and selling them off might bring in some cash flow into the business but after some time, the business will face disaster anyways. Instead, we should try to utilize this time. We should focus more on taking risks than on prioritizing security and survival. This is the best time we can have.
Rather than lowering the prices, we should try to find differentiation in our business or our products. We will have to find the USPs. So that we can differentiate our business or the products from them who are selling at lower prices. We will have to shift people’s views from price point to our USPs.
We must not try selling to everyone. We will have to create a specific buyer persona and approach only to them. We must take targeted marketing campaigns into serious consideration. We do not have to reach everyone. We will only have to reach those people who will buy our products at our prices.
Also, this is the best time to invest in customer relationships. To solidify the relationships with our existing customers. We must not push them for sales, instead, we must put all our efforts and focus on trying to solidify relationships with them.
Building a community of existing customers is a must. It will help us to convert our existing customers into our loyal customers. There is no other way around. We must change our mindset from getting immediate rewards to investing in assets, and our customers are our assets. These assets will bring in sales in the coming times, irrespective of the prices. This is one of the reasons I said that tendency of buying a product is not always dependent on the prices. The world is moving at a very fast pace and if we local business owners cannot match the speed then we will perish, or we may always stay as a small supplier of a big company.
One last thing I must say is that selling manually one to one is a backdated process. Yes, it is still effective but it is slow and has a very little repelled effect. Now everything is going on with automation. We must find our own strategy to automate each little aspect of our business. If we local business owners cannot accept new things then we will always have to fight for our survival.
I think this is a great time to get out of our comfort zone and to give more effort to organize our business model. This is the only way forward. This new drive among people to do business after COVID-19 is bringing more and more businesses into every industry. This is a proud time for all of us business owners. We must feel happy for them and prepare ourselves also. There will be a sudden increase in competition and the businesses unable to move forward with time will not survive.
