Do you remember the three most important words in real estate? Of course you do; Location, Location,Location, right? Well what if you are a small business owner, what are your three most important words in small business right now? Database, database and database! Not having a detailed database of your current customers is not only inexcusable in today’s challenging economy, I maintain that it is a sure sign that you, as a small business owner, are not in this for the long haul.
Customer Retention Strategy #1: Put together a database of your clients!
There are many programs available to help you do this, you can simply Google “CRM” or “Customer Relations Management” and you will get over 65 million hits. ACT!, Contstant Contact, Goldmine are just a few of the database applications you can use. I don’t care if it is a simple Excel spreadsheet, just get a list of your customers on paper.
Now that you have the database built, what should you do with it?
Customer Retention Strategy #2: Build a “Keep in Touch” strategy that communicates with your customer in an appropriately timed and value added way.
Too many business owners either over-communicate, bombarding their customers so often and with so little value that they just eventually tune out or add you to their “spammers” list; or they never communicate at all. I agree with my mentor and author Michael Port who said in his book, Book Yourself Solid, “The lack of a solid keep in touch strategy is where most businesses fail”.
This first means that you have received their permission to keep in touch!
Most of my database comes from the individuals in the groups that I speak to. At the conclusion of my presentation, I hand out a simple, one page survey. I ask them about the room, the content, the one thing they got from my presentation, etc. Most importantly however, I have a checkbox that says, “I would like the opportunity to keep in touch with you and continue to provide value to your sales and marketing efforts after this presentation. Please check the box to give me permission to do this”. Guess what, I get 100% of the boxes checked.
You, as the business owner, have to decide what the appropriate frequency of communication is as it relates to your business. I’ll give you an example of one business that communicates too much, The Men’s Wearhouse. Once you get into their list, you literally get an email every week, sometimes more often, about their latest sale. I often wonder who the really foolish people are who wander into a Men’s Wearhouse on the 1 day a year they don’t have a sale and pays full price. How stupid. There is no value for me in the never ending sale. Eventually, I just added them to my “blocked senders” list and I never shop there. A more appropriate strategy might be Nordstroms. Once a year they have a Menswear sale. I get the one email they send, I mark it on my calendar, and I make special point to attend, even though the closest store is 45 minutes away. I can confidently say that I have never missed this sale in my 10 plus years as a Nordstrom customer.
Customer Retention Strategy #3: Include a “call to action” and ask for the referral!
End every customer communication with a call to action! Ask your customer to do something! It might be as simple as “have a great holiday” (non-selling message), or it might be as direct as “these sale prices will only be available on Monday”. Simply keeping in touch to keep in touch is not enough. Also remember to tailor your call to action to the group you are communicating with.
On the subject of referrals, I think that there is a stigma attached to that phrase sometimes that puts people off. In my mortgage practice, I usually say something like this, “My team and I appreciate you very much, especially for those that you have introduced us to over the years”. This, to me, is the same as “Thank for the referral”, but more customer friendly.
So, to conclude, I maintain that designing and implementing your customer retention marketing program is more important than your new client acquisition marketing and, in the long run, pay bigger dividends.
I appreciate your comments and encourage you to send your questions to brent@coachbrent.com.
