Raving fans are customer who not only tell all their friends and colleagues about you, they actually bring them to you and help you sell things to them.
It’s a frightening fact of business that it costs six times more to attract new customers to our businesses than we do to up-sell, on-sell and generally over service our existing customers so that they stay our customers and don’t leave us and go to our competition.
Just as frightening is the fact that 68 percent of customers who leave a company do so simply because of a perceived indifference, you actually didn’t do anything wrong, the customer just thought you didn’t care enough!
So in what ways did you show your customers you didn’t care enough? Well, it can be in a variety of ways, you forget to thank them, you can’t remember their name, you didn’t offer that extra little bit, you didn’t suggest that accessory which would be perfect or one of dozens of other little perceived indifferences that your competition can capitalize on.
Here are some simple tips that you can integrate into your business today which will help you to keep your customers coming back, bringing their friends with them and generally shouting your name from rooftops telling people why, if they’re not dealing with you, they’re missing out on something wonderful!
- Send them thank you cards
- Sell them everything they need to gain maximum benefit from the purchase
- Use their name frequently
- Call them up just to make sure everything is going well
- Invite them to special sales just for a privileged few, exceptional clients
- Call them up when something new arrives in stock that you know they would like
- Ask them for their suggestions as to how you could improve your service to them
- Follow up & follow up again
- Under promise and over deliver
None of this is difficult, it starts with you and you must lead by example because your team does everything you do. If you care about your customers they will care about you and help you to grow your business.