How to win customers vs. how to lose customers

Today we will compare the strategies of two massive South African companies (Capitec and Woolworths) - and we will do so simply by quoting a Sunday World article and a recent post of ours here.

Sunday World

This is revealed in business journalist TJ Strydom’s recently published unauthorised book Capitec Stalking Giants, which traces the retail bank’s genesis and phenomenal growth over the past two decades.

The management of South Africa’s biggest bank by client numbers, which started as a microlender, declined suggestions from its board of directors to sell insurance policies and cellphone airtime.

Then Capitec chairman Jannie Mouton is quoted in the book as having questioned the bank’s executive on their failure to expand the business to sell the two products.

“And then they (Capitec management) looked at me and said, ‘Nee, Jannie.’ And I said, but give me a reason, and they said, ‘You must just listen’,” recalled Mouton.

...

Capitec CEO Riaan Stassen:

I can’t stand all those strategies about cross-selling or upselling. We don’t sit around a table and ask ourselves how we can get more money out of our client base. We ask ourselves what our customers need and how we can give it to them in a way that’s different to, and will beat our competitors.

“We are not going to sell potatoes in the banking hall!”

Our Woolworths Ventures Article

The Woolworths CEO, Roy Bagattini, says the group’s “biggest opportunity is not in acquiring new customers; it is in growing the share of wallet of our existing customers”.

Over to You

You are now free compare the success records of these two companies over the last few years.

The one has continued to gain customers from its competitors and the other has continued to lose customers to its biggest competitor.

Walking the Cow versus Milking the Cow?