Don’t be the odd one out when it comes to launching a subscription model in your business sector…
Like many businesses, you probably started out selling your products and services through the usual distribution channels (warehouses, retailers, distributers) or directly to your end customer.
But what if you viewed your business in a different way, so that you’re with your customer every step of the way, from the point of purchase to the final delivery?
Looking at things in this way alters your perspective and makes you rethink your customer focus.
This shift will compel you to look at how your business operates and functions, at the nature of your team and its culture and purpose and at the changes you need to make to take it to the next level of success.
Making the shift from a product focus to a customer focus means you build ongoing customer relationships that allow your business to thrive.
So how do you do this? You build a subscription model for your business and re-imagine your customers as subscribers.
Subscription services work – just look at Oddbox, which started in 2016 as a subscription service that delivers to customers (subscribers) a weekly box of fruit and vegetables that would otherwise go to waste due to their size or shape or to being surplus to requirements.
You don’t order a box of fruit or vegetables – you rescue it. Their mission statement – fighting food waste, one curvy cucumber at a time.
They simply want to reduce the approximately 3 million tonnes of fruit and veg that go to waste each year. They talk to local farmers and even deliver overnight to minimise emissions.
When you look at their website, the importance to them of minimising food waste, helping the environment and slowing climate change is clear.
Oddbox started with 70 subscribers. By 2018, that number was 2500, a 6-fold year-on-year growth.
You may be thinking that it was easier for Oddbox, as they began their business using the subscription model.
And it is true that it can be more difficult to make this change with products and services you are already selling, but it can be done.
Take Adobe, for example – they are a creative service and are known for creating the PDF document format. Adobe became hugely successful between 2002 and 2012, selling licenses and upgrades to their software. In 2012, the business was worth $15.3 billion; however, over the next 3 years they shifted their business to a monthly subscription model and by January 2022 were valued at $243 billion – almost 16x more than in 2002.
You can do the same. Subscriptions can work, and they mean predictable income and a way of improving your customer relationships.
It’s time to start taking a serious look at starting or expanding the subscription model in your own business.
