HOW TO ATTRACT CUSTOMERS AS A TERMINAL AGENT

How to attract customers as a terminal agent

So you have signed up as a terminal agent expecting to make good money but it has not quite happened for you yet?

I know that at this point, you are probably frustrated with the difficulty of getting people to patronise you as a terminal agent. Who will not be frustrated anyway? What’s the point of having a business if nobody is patronising you?

The rat race of getting customers for your terminal agent business can be frustrating but you can avoid it being a rat race by targeting a select  group of customers who are most likely to buy.

Attracting customers can be a herculean task for a any business, but with these few pointers we about to give you, you would be on your way to getting a good chunk of customers. Here are a few steps to take:

Know Your Business Inside and Out

This seems like an obvious thing to do but trust me, it is not. When trying to convince prospective customers to buy, explaining exactly what you want for them is the easiest way to get them interested in the brand. Therefore, the importance of you knowing your business through and through can not be overemphasized. For it is only when you know your business inside out that you will be able to explain it to a prospective customer.

Identify Your Ideal Client

Identifying your ideal client is an important step in getting customers through the door and running a sustainable business. As Brian Tracy says in this blog post for Entrepreneur.com , The ability to find a customer, sell your product or service to that customer, and satisfy the customer so that he buys from you again should be the central focus of all entrepreneurial activity

Who do you think are more likely to buy from you? Your friends? Your classmates? Your family members? Whoever they are, you have to take the first step of identifying them, their habits, where they hang out and in this case, how they pay bills. This is your first step in attracting them because when you know them, then you can approach them.

Discover Where Your Customer Lives

After properly defining who your target customers are, the next step is to find out where they live. Well- not literally in many cases, but the idea is to know their needs and where to meet them at the point of that need.

When you do that, you are at a lot of advantage to convert them quickly.

Position Yourself as the Answer

Now that you know where your customers live and where to meet them at the point of their needs, you want to position yourself as the go-to person that will solve their problems. Take for instance a middle-aged Papa Nkechi who finds it difficult to pay his Gotv bills. He travels 100km to the community hub where he normally pays his Gotv bill. If you position yourself close to his neighbourhood, he will naturally be more than happy to patronise your business! So as you can see, positioning yourself as the answer to people’s problem comes with a lot of perks and trust me, people have a lot of problems with bill payments.

For more information on how to position yourself as the answer for prospective customers, read this post by WPengine on Everconvert.com

Word of mouth works!

We are all a part of a community, and there is no better place to start promoting your terminal agent business than in your community. For one, your close community is possibly your strongest support system and they are always almost certainly within the proximity of your business.

More so, as Jacob McMillen puts it in this post for Yotpo, 92% of consumers will believe a recommendation from friends and family over ANY other type of advertising. Therefore, you can see the huge potential that your word of mouth advertising has for.

Go out today, call that friend, send a WhatsApp broadcast message and tell your community that you are open for business.

Follow Up

Many Nigerian businesses fail when it comes to following up their customers after they have made a purchase and that is a counterproductive action. We spend a lot of money and/or time to get new customers through the door and when they buy, we just abandon them even though it is a lot cheaper and more probable to get returning customers to buy/patronise us. This culture is more mind-blowing when you realise that, according to Kissmetrics, it’s nearly 7 times less expensive to retain an existing customer than to gain a new one.

So you can see that you don’t want that happening to you. You want to get as many returning customers as possible, and the best way to do that is by following them up. That customer that buys DSTV subscription from you monthly, you should probably keep a record of him and call him to remind him when his subscription is about to expire. The lady that normally recharges her IKEDC prepaid metre with you, you should reach out and ask her if she knows how to input the token on her meter. T

These are just a few ways of following up your customers. For a more detailed analysis, read this post on 25 Ways to Keep a Customer For Life by Amanet.

Be Trustworthy

There are times when customers will not be able to come down to your physical location in order to pay and they would probably transfer the money to you to help conduct the transaction. Helping them do the transaction in a timely and transparent fashion will engender trust in your customers and trust is an important ingredient that will help you business grow in the short and long term.

These a few pointers as to how you can keep attracting both new and returning customers to your business. One of the most important point to note here is that is while it is exciting and exhilarating to get new customers, it is even better to retain a returning customer as he or she is a lot easier to convert. Also, you have to start where you are and do what you can. Don’t wait until you have a thousand customers, start with word of mouth in your community and scale up as your business grows.

You are already partnering with a brand that has your best interest at heart, so why shouldn’t you succeed? Take advantage of our 24/7 customer support channels, competitive commission rates, and excellent service delivery to satisfy customer needs and power your business Good luck!