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Pali Singh "Establishing a relationship with customers and stakeholders" - YouTube
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Hello, my name is Pritpal Singh. I go by Pali, and
I’m a professor in the Department of Electrical
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and Computer Engineering at Villanova University.
I'm going to talk to you today about establishing
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a relationship with stakeholders and customers.
I have been working in several countries working
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on different types of projects; educational
projects, a telehealth project in Nicaragua,
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as well as some renewable energy related
projects. I have and I also run my own
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solar business in India and so I have some good
background related to green entrepreneurship.
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So today we're going to talk about
stakeholders and customers and you've
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already in your previous lessons learned
about how to engage with stakeholders and
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how to identify who the stakeholders and customers
are. Here I'd like to talk a little bit more about
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how you develop those relationships with customers
and why that is so important for your venture.
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As you know, with the business model canvas
one of the blocks in that business model canvas
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is customer relationships. We want to think
about how to connect with customers because
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without customers there's no business and not only
customers but there may be other key stakeholders
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that we need to engage with; whether it's the
Ministry of Education. So for example, let's say
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we're trying to roll out a new educational
set of educational modules that we want to
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share on sustainability with the teachers in
the schools. We may need to go through the
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Ministry of Education in the country or, as I
did in Nicaragua working on a telehealth project,
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I needed to engage with the Ministry of Health
there. Those would be stakeholders that we may
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want to engage in but customers are the people
who are going to pay us for providing the services
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and so we need to make sure that we
understand how to engage with those customers.
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So what is the motivation
for customer relationships?
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Well, the first thing is of course we want to
acquire customers. Trying to acquire customers
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we have to be able to connect with people,
figure out how we're going to bring customers in
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for purchasing our products and services.
Then if we get customers we want to be able
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to retain those customers. We can offer
special discounts to loyal customers,
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if we have customers we may want to give them
some special treatment, some discounts and so on.
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So it's important for us to keep our customers
that we've acquired and retain those customers.
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Then, of course, we as entrepreneurs want
to boost our sales and grow the enterprise.
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So these are the three motivations for coming up
with the strategies for relating to customers.
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I want to give an example of one particular
product here. This is the so-called MoneyMaker
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Pump by KickStart and there are a couple of
YouTube videos here that I think you'll enjoy.
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But one of the key learnings by KickStart
in trying to distribute this treadle pump,
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so it's a throttle pump that you can move up and
down on with your feet and this allows you to
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pump water from the ground, and it's a low-cost
approach for irrigating the farm, particularly for
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smallholder farmers. This is something that
can increase your revenue and productivity
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and it can pay for itself within a couple of crop
cycles. What they found in terms of trying to get
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customers to purchase this product was that they
actually had to take the unit out into the field
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and show farmers how it worked, so that they
could see firsthand how the product would work.
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So having that one-on-one interaction between
your sales team and the customer and doing that
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in-person interaction is a good way to develop
that relationship and acquire customers.
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Of course that can be relatively costly because
you have to go from place to place so if you
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could have a central location where farmers
could come to you and you could demonstrate
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the product that's another way but then you have
to get word out to your potential customers.
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That can be done through word
of mouth or it can be done by
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flyers. For example, I was in Nairobi last year
and there was a person who had these flyers for
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selling and installing solar water heater
systems. He was standing on a street corner
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distributing these flyers to passersby and then
I picked one up and I looked at it and if I was
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in the market to potentially buy that product I
would be able to follow up with the company. They
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had a telephone number on there and a website.
Then you can promote your product that way.
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Some of the questions that we need to consider
when thinking about relating to customers is
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what type of relationship does each of
our customer segments expect from us?
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When we're looking at customer segments there
may be high-end customers and then there may be
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lower end customers and they will have different
expectations in terms of how we relate to them.
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How do customers feel? Let's say you're buying
an expensive car, then you'd be brought into the
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showroom, you'd be given a red carpet treatment,
you'd be given a very warm welcome to come in and
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see the high-end car. On the other hand, if you're
looking at a cheaper line of model it may be that
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you don't get quite the same quality of treatment.
No doubt they'll still be polite to you and you
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will be a potential sale for the salesforce so
they will treat you well, but they won't give you
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all that special treatment
that you get at a high-end
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customer dealership. Each customer segment may
have different ways that you interact with them.
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Think about if you're going about
and go out and buy a Tesla electric,
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clearly that's a very expensive investment,
you'll expect some special treatment for this.
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You have to think about what
relationships have you established.
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One of the important things in trying to establish
relationships, oftentimes you hear particularly
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of a used car salesman that they're a little
bit shady and not necessarily to be trusted,
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but when you're working as a
green entrepreneur in particular,
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you really have to share your goodness and your
well wishes with your customers because you really
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want them to have good faith and trust in you that
this technology, that your service that you're
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providing, is going to offer some special
benefits to the community, as well as to you as
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a customer, and to the planet. Remember, we
talked about planet, profits, and people.
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Now when you're relating to customers it
can be relatively costly as we mentioned.
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If you have to have a special sales room you have
to have special equipment and things in there
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that can get very costly. Or if you have
to go out to many rural communities,
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there you might want to think about how we can
work with people who could potentially be our
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sales force in the field, and I'll give you an
example of that in just a moment. Then how are
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the costs of doing these relationships with your
customers? How does it integrate? Categories
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of customer relationships include personal
assistance, sales people, after sales support,
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human interaction, as I mentioned distributing
fliers, going door to door, and with regards to
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that I want to give an example. Green Light Planet
originally wanted to distribute solar lanterns to
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communities in India and the mechanism that they
thought for distributing these solar lanterns was
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in each village there's a kiosk that sells
all sorts of things like shampoo, soap,
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chewing gum, and things like that so they
said let's just give it to the kiosks
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and have them sell it for us and they found that
they sold very few of these solar lanterns in
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that way. The reason was that a solar lantern only
operates at night and these kiosks are typically
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only open during the day. What they said was,
“we need to get this out to the customer so
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we have to educate the customers”. That's
another important thing; when you're offering
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a new product in a community the customer may not
always be aware of its capabilities; what it is,
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so there's a certain education required for the
customer. What they did was they said, “well we
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need to demonstrate these at night when people
can see the light shining when it's dark outside”.
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What they did was they hired teachers in the
villages because think about it, teachers,
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you entrust your child with the teacher so you
have trust in the teachers in the community
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and so you already have the built-in trusted
relationship with your sales person there.
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Teachers work during the day and this provided
an opportunity to make some extra income by
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going around at night to demonstrate these solar
lanterns. Using this distribution channel and this
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technique they were able to get sales of their
product in the marketplace and then of course word
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got out and they didn't need to be as involved
in going from door to door to sell their product.
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They were able to then advertise it and set up
shops and things like that. The point is that
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you need to understand the context for selling
your product and if there's education required
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to include that education of the customer as part
of your relationship building with the customer.
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In some cases you may just be able to have no
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direct personal connection with the customer.
Think of if you want to buy something from
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Amazon. You go to the Amazon website and you'd
order it and you don't interact with the person.
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Web sales, or e-commerce, are another way of
distributing your products to customers. Then you
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have to do promotional techniques to get people
to come to the website to purchase your products.
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Then using user communities to get customer
feedback on products; having people for example
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rate their solar lanterns and share that feedback
with other people in the communities. That way
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you can get validation for your
product and increase sales.
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Then the final thing is you can co-create value
with customers. You can go to customers and say
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what is it that you need in this community, that
we can help you with in terms of sustainability,
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in terms of green energy, in terms of
sustainable agriculture, and so on.
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You can co-create value with the customers
because then they're essentially defining for you
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the scope and specifications for your
product or service and then you know
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you have a buy-in from the customer because
you've worked with them to co-create the product.
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With that, I'd like to wish you much success
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in building your relationships with
your customers and key stakeholders.
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