Guide Back to Basics Chapter 1 – Know your Customer: Making the Chocolate Teapot useful to you

Discussion in 'Our Advice and Guides' started by The Wholesale Community, Jan 18, 2019.

Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.
  1. The Wholesale Community

    The Wholesale Community

    Feb 16, 2018
    Any successful business will tell you that one of the key ingredients in building the company was customers – their loyalty, their spend, their want or need for the product.

    We run events for people starting out in the industry looking for advice from marketplaces and retailers - and when you ask the majority of people during networking about their business, surprisingly few mention the customers within the first few minutes. They usually say “Well I’ve got a great product that…X” or “We’ve built a website that will change the world by…Y”.

    Now that’s not to say they haven’t actually thought about it, probably most have at some point, but it is often surprisingly low down the priority list. And why should it be top? Because customers are the lifeblood of your business, a lot of other things you could do without for a day… without customers, you cannot survive – you can make the prettiest website, the most beautiful product, top notch service, do all the marketing in the world. But, without someone buying or using the product, you have nothing.


    Usually most of us are somewhere between having never considered the customer, and having entirely all our focus on them. But it is worth taking a minute

    There’s a reason that the phrase ‘as useful as a chocolate teapot’ exists. But there’s also a reason that companies make chocolate teapots[1] and there’s a lesson to be learnt here – because these business’ thought about the customer. They have thought about their product in the same way as the genius of the ‘Pet Rock’ (1.5 million Pet Rocks were sold for $4 each![2]) – what will people buy?

    They thought about who their customers were and what they wanted. Essentially people looking for a humorous gift, at a cheap price that will make people laugh! That’s why they added the ‘care for your pet rock pamphlet’ in the style of a pet guide. In the case of the chocolate teapot they’ve gone for chocolate fanatics, making the product innovative so it turns into a fondue which can be eaten.

    Now if you’re not going for novelty this may be harder! So what should be considered? Isn’t this just an easy task? Not at all and it should direct every design, sales, marketing and pricing decision you make. So for this first chapter the homework is answering the 10 below questions from the Business Link UK[3] to see if you really know everything you need to know about your customers.

    Ten things you need to know about your customers

    1. Who they are

    2. What they do

    3. Why they buy

    4. When they buy

    5. How they buy

    6. How much money they have

    7. What makes them feel good about buying

    8. What they expect of you

    9. What they think about you

    10. What they think about your competitors

    [3] Business Link UK (now GOV.UK/Business)
Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.
Back to top

Share This Page