If I told you how to increase your sales by as much as 50% for as little as $100. per month, would you be interested? Of course you would, what business owner wouldn’t be interested? By the time you have finished this article you will have figured out how to do just that.
Take a few moments and think of all the inactive customer files you have in your file cabinet or on your computer. Business owners often make the costly mistake of servicing a customer once then assuming “they’ll stay” as a customer or client without maintaining and growing that relationship.
A year later that business owner is wondering what happened to that customer and where they went. Why haven’t they heard from them? Did they leave? If so, why?
There are many reasons a customer or client may leave you, but the ones you will hear most often are:
They felt your pricing was too high.
They had an unresolved complaint or negative experience.
They took a competitors offer.
They left because they felt you didn’t care.
When you consider that the last two make up the majority of why a client or customer will no longer use your service or buy your products – it can be a harsh bit of reality. After all it means they are an inactive client because they felt you didn’t care about them and your competitor did.
This makes sense when you consider that customers often purchase your service or product because they have developed a relationship with you, or they were referred to you by a friend or associate.
When faced with the above facts, it’s confusing to think that businesses spend 80% of their marketing dollars going after new customers and clients rather than nurturing, retaining, and maintaining the customer relationships they already have.
Before you spend your time and money going after new customers and clients you do not currently have a relationship with consider the following statistics:
Repeat customers spend 33% more than new customers.
Referrals among repeat customers are 107% greater than non-customers.
It costs six times more to sell something to a prospect than to sell that same thing to a customer.
It’s also important to try to satisfy your clients and customers with the right products and services, supported by the right promotion. For example; if you have a new service you want to promote, you could post a sign in your business and hope that draws some attention. You could also rely on word-of-mouth advertising to promote the new service.
But a more effective way to promote your new service would be with a newsletter article explaining the benefits of the service so your client will know why they should try it. If you include a coupon, your customers will be even more likely to try it. People love a good bargain and they expect you to compete for their business.
While a growing business needs to constantly capture new customers, the focus and priority should be on pleasing your existing customer base. Companies that fail to nurture and retain their customer base will lose them to their competitors and they will ultimately fail. You will also spend twice as much to get new clients as you will in maintaining your existing customer base.
The bottom line is that one of the key components in marketing and business growth is to spend the majority of your time and effort nurturing customer relationships, so that you get business from existing clients and customers. This is a strategy that will move you forward in increasing your sales by 50% without breaking your budget.
Consistent and persistent marketing is the key to marketing success and building your business.