We’re (finally!) seeing a lot of businesses starting to focus on client care and the client experience.
The Harvard Business Review recently referred to this as a “new” strategy:
“The new source of competitive advantage is customer centricity: deeply understanding your customers’ needs and fulfilling them better than anyone else.”
And they call this “new”. It’s far from new, it takes us back to a — long overdue IMHO — time when businesses knew your name, your likes and your dislikes. When they set something aside knowing you’d love it.
One large company in the marketing world even declared that they’re going to be more “about their customer” and that their events won’t have as many sales pitches as in the past.
In fact, the second sentence in a mailing they recently sent me states “We’re tossing out the pitches (literally, no more order forms passed up and down the aisles)…”. Reminds me of the former president’s speech of a “kinder, gentler nation” only for marketing.
My immediate, uncensored thought is “It’s about time!” — there’s nothing more infuriating than spending thousands of dollars on a training event/travel and they spend at least half the time trying to sell you something else.
If you’ve been to any events recently, you know what this means — almost every person who speaks, sells. In some cases the speaker had to pay to be on stage and they often put more pressure on themselves to sell to recoup their investment.
The answer? Extreme Client Care™. It’s the reason we have a 93% client retention rate of over four years. What’s that mean?
That means that 9 out of every 10 clients buys from our business again and again for over 4 years.
What’s your Client Retention Rate: How long your average client stays with your business?
If you don’t know the answer to that question, it’s time to find out:
Review which reports your shopping cart/point-of-sale system offers and use the appropriate one .
If you’re dealing with anecdotal data, review your list of clients and put a check mark for each month they’ve been with you. Count your check marks and divide by the total number of clients. It’ll give you an idea.
When reviewing your Q4 objectives and your 2017 goals, it’s critical to include a Client Retention Plan/Program for maximum profitability and leverage.