Creating the perfect Business Strategy and developing an excellent Marketing Strategy will definitely improve your company’s sales and increase your income, but in most cases that only applies in the short term. We have previously discussed that in order to take your business to the next level and grow you must focus on creating strategies and setting goals that have more impact on the long term than in the short term. Growing a business is like a marathon, it demands lots of effort and most importantly consistency. Loyalty is for business what training is for athletes before running a marathon, it is the element that reminds them that they have done this before, boosting their confidence and motivating them to go the extra mile and finish the race. But what is Loyalty in terms of business and why is it so important for enterprises? Let us break it down for you.
Loyalty Defined
Loyalty is the relationship built between two sides that relies on one thing and that is trust. So when we talk about loyalty we must always keep in mind the foundation of this term and that is trust. There are three factors that affect loyalty and those are:
Relationship Strength: The strength of the relationship developed between two sides, in other words the reasons why one side trusts an other side and is willing to repeat a transaction.
Perceived Alternatives: The range of options involved parties have that are perceived as alternatives and might affect their final choice.
Critical Episodes: Events that have occurred that might have either a positive or a negative influence on ones perception of building or demolishing trust.
Loyalty is The Best Competitive Advantage
Entrepreneurs, CEOs and Business Owners understand that the best way to beat their rivals and move up the competition ladder is by gaining competitive advantages. Loyalty for business is the best competitive advantage an organisation can gain and enterprises should focus more on this matter. By building loyalty for your company you can improve sales, income, operations and various other sectors of your business. Most importantly though loyalty works as a stabiliser for your company ensuring you keep your market share as is since your customers stay loyal helping you focus on the part of the market you want to acquire.
Types of Loyalty
There is a misconception that loyalty has to do only with customers and you might want to think about that again. Loyalty indeed has to do with customers but it also has to do with your human resources, in other words your personnel.
Customer Loyalty: Your customers are the reason why your business is running. They are the Alpha and the Omega and you should always focus on gaining their trust in order to make them loyal. Offer your customers reasons to be loyal and try creating a long lasting relationship with them that is based on trust and quality and try to do that daily, after all loyalty is like a marathon and it has to do with consistency.
Personnel Loyalty: No matter what type of business you run and no matter what assets you possess your most important asset will always be your human resources. Most people think that when we talk about loyalty for business we only talk about customers. That is a very wrong perception because loyalty has to do with the people that create your products or services as much as it has to do with the people that consume them. Focus on your people and try to keep them loyal, success comes from within and if your people are happy and loyal sooner or later the message will be delivered to the world.
Once you get a clear understanding of what loyalty is and why it is so important for business you will want to focus on it more. Just remember that loyalty is hard to gain, and although this trust-relationship takes a long time and hard effort to build it can be vanished in an instant.
