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You Will Never Lack if You Keep Your Customers Coming
Back
Good times, bad times,
business ups and downs. Profit gains and money loss
in a merry-sales-go-round. Oh yeah! Finding new customers
is not always easy, and you can suffer for it during
those times when it's not.
You can keep putting out the deals in
expensive advertising, but when that fails does that
mean you go broke? Absolutely not!
Not if you have already built up a customer
base, and have provided those customers with good service
and good products. What you have built up by doing this
is your company's number one asset.
Do you know how much that asset is worth?
Do you know the lifetime value of your customers? That
is how much a customer spends a year on average with
you, times the number of years they stay a customer,
times the number of customers you have.
It can add up to a lot, if you are doing
things in the right way.
Do you have marketing geared toward
your current customers?
Do you take the trouble to find out things they specifically
and generally like and dislike? Do you ask what you
might do to serve them better? Do you publicize a solid
guarantee and honor it?
With the right customer service you
can keep your customers for LIFE!
Find out information about your customers.
Keep a list of their names and addresses so you can
keep in constant communication with them by sending
a heads-up on deals, new stock, and anything that would
make them feel special. Postcards are perfect for doing
that. Even get their month and day of birth so you can
send them birthday cards giving them their own special
discount on anything they want.
Give away things to your customers.
Make promotional items freely available like pens, pencils,
pocket planners, calendars, calculators, key-chains,
mugs, you name it. All those things will have your business
name, address, and phone number on them. Sending something
like that to them in the mail would even give it more
value in your customer's eyes. The more useful the item,
the more you will be in the customers sight and mind.
That is a good thing!
If you have a clothing store, get to
know your customer's sizes. As soon as they walk in
the door, greet them by name and say you have saved
something for them that you know will look great on
them. Then pick the newest most expensive piece of clothing
to show them. Say that they simply must try it on, and
while they will be in the changing room anyway, fix
them up with everything to go with it for trying on
as well. You will collect sales for more items once
they see how good they look in them. Throw them over
the edge by giving them a break in price if they get
the entire outfit with accessories.
If you do not have a clothing store,
find a way to get samples of what you do have to your
customers that they can try. Get them to use something
on a trial basis. Once you do that, their ownership
of it is practically assured! Once someone is in possession
of something, giving it up creates the painful emotion
of loss.
A happy customer is a loyal customer.
Loyalty comes by your customers knowing you care about
them, are actively educating them in the things they
are interested in, and knowing you will continuously
be able to meet their needs in the best way for them.
The customer is always right in that
they know what they want. You are always on top of it
by presenting what you have as not only something they
want, but something they've got to have. And not just
something they themselves got to have. Maybe they have
a husband, wife, or children. Compel your customer to
treat the family too.
Here is something to jump on. Perhaps
your customer is a business owner. Get that person to
send the customers for their business over to your business.
Beyond word of mouth referral, they can do that by giving
coupons good for things in your store, or maybe you
can get permission to put a raffle box in their store
that gives prizes given by your store. You can either
pay them to do it or return the favor. There can be
many ways to help each other in cooperation, even paying
each other commissions, and also bundling your two company's
products and services together at favorable prices for
customers. You will find that such arrangements, called
Joint Venture Partnering, can be very lucrative as it
quickly builds your customer base.
It pays to know your customer, and to
know how to supplement and expand your products and
services with things like go-along additions, deluxe
automatic maintenance service, special package deals,
premium upgrades, complimentary products, etc. Think
of anything you can.
Give your customer something to put
in their purse or wallet, something that equals money
to them. A discount card that gives discounts on purchases,
or a buyers card that gives rewards after a determined
amount of purchases accumulated from multiple visits
are two examples. The surest way to get your customer
to spend more with you is getting them a charge card.
Your own store credit card in your customer's possession
is guaranteed to spike sales.
You will have a solid relationship with
the customers you have already gotten, and through that
relationship, your business will evolve!
This gives lifetime value of a customer
a whole other meaning. You are finding ways to improve
yourself and your business. Take periodic customer surveys.
That way the customer is giving intellectual input as
well as money into your business, and if you are innovative
enough to make use of them, the customer will more than
likely also be giving you new customers by recommending
you to their friends.
Other things you can do: offer your
customers incentives for making referrals & collect
testimonial stories from them to use in your ads because
the best advertising comes from satisfied customers.
Not only that, a customer that gives a testimonial for
you will become even more loyal by doing it. Imagine
that! It just goes to show how things get solidified
when written down. Do you write down the goals you have
for your business? How about the goals of your business?
Write a Service Pledge to your customers.
Post it up where you do business so your customers know
what great service they can expect. Find the greatest
benefit that solves the most major concern to your customers,
perhaps something unique that no other business in the
area offers. Make a catchy slogan out of it. Use it
wherever the name of your business is displayed so that
your business will be known by the slogan. When employees
eagerly answer the phone, have them not only say the
name of the business, but the slogan as well, followed
by giving their name and asking "how may I help
you?"
If you spruce up your business enough
to make it an interesting topic of conversation, your
customers will even talk you up to strangers they meet.
Your reputation will travel by work of mouth.
Instead of you looking to find new customers,
they will be finding you. And on top of that, their
lifetime value will be much greater by your building
the greater value into your business. This happens just
by catering to your current customers rather than doing
the usual routine of chasing after new ones.
That is why you will never lack if you
keep your customers coming back.
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