Customer Retention and Maintenance

Long-term consumer loyalty comes from a company-wide mindset that puts the customer and his needs first in everything you do, everything you advertise, and everything you sell or service. However, in today’s highly competitive marketplace, companies often struggle with keeping a balance among low-cost products, a healthy bottom line, operational efficiencies, cutbacks, and global competition, to name a few.

These are a lot of distractions, and it’s easy to become sidetracked and lose focus on the other important component of your business: the customer. Here are five warning signs to beware of that can lead to a potential loss of customer focus.

• Regarding “customer focus” as a goal or project, instead of a strategy;

• Becoming more concerned with Return On Investment studies than treating each customer right:

• Getting out of touch with what the customer truly values;

• Tracking the wrong behaviour;

• Failing to treat employees as customers.

Let’s take “tracking the wrong behaviour” and expand on it a little bit.

If your management team is focused solely on targets, quotas, number of sales calls made, or the number of customer service follow-up calls per day, you’re tracking numbers, results, and activity. Those things are important, but how does the customer feel when he is being rushed off the phone or through the door just so an employee can get to the next task to be sure he fills his daily quota?

Do your customers feel like they are valued and appreciated for the money they are spending with you? What do you know about those customers, besides how much they spend or how frequently they order?

Today’s successful organizations have learned the value of solid customer relationships, and they protect them with everything they have. Loyal customers cost less to maintain, they are less likely to shop prices, less likely to defect to a competitor, and they tend to increase their annual spending over time. Referral business is yet another benefit derived from loyal customers.

Customer loyalty is achieved after you’ve taken the time to get to know them. Without an awareness of their history, ideas, principles, and circumstances, it would be difficult to supply your customers with anything of real value to them.

When was the last time you sat down with your long-standing customers to inquire about what’s new in their lives, in their business, and in their industry?

Just because you may have had them in your portfolio or database for a long time doesn’t mean they will remain there if left unattended. Customers have changed, along with just about every business in the last few years. It is in every organization’s best interests to periodically find out how, why, and just how much they have changed, if you want to retain them.

By asking a few meaningful questions, you can learn an abundance of information that will help you to sustain a mutually beneficial customer relationship for the long term.

• How has the economic downturn affected them?

• How have their budgets been affected?

• Have they changed buying patterns? Frequency?

• Have they downsized or expanded as an organization?

Once you learn how their business has changed and how they have been affected, you’ll probably notice their buying behaviour has also changed. Today’s customers want more choice; they want more control over the buying process; they want access to fast, easy service; and they want individual attention from people they can trust who can help them grow their business.

Once you have established that long-term trusted relationship with a customer, how do you manage and maintain it so he stays?

I’ve often heard high-level athletes in pro sports say that it’s almost harder to keep their high-paying position in the big leagues than it was to get there in the first place.

As in sports, there’s always someone lurking in the shadows ready to knock you off your pedestal or take your top spot or your top customers–and that someone is known as your competition. Competitive knowledge and intelligence will help you stay one step ahead.

Find out what new products they offer, what their pricing strategy is, how they market to their customers, and how they may intend to steal yours. Think of it as a survival tactic: when you know what the competition’s next move is likely to be, then you are better able to counter it to protect your customers from them.

But retention strategies are not just about learning everything there is to know about your customers or about staying one step ahead of the competition. It’s also about retaining great employees.

Consider this question. If management and leadership don’t treat the employees like they matter or have value in the shop’s day-to-day operations, how are they expected to treat your customers in a way that will make them feel valued further down the line?

Here’s a quick tip: when you treat your employees as you would a long-term valued customer, they will remain loyal and won’t want to work anywhere else. They will feel good about their jobs, their company, and their contribution to the overall success of the organization.

Whether customer interaction comes from an accounting clerk, a salesperson, counterperson, or parts driver, empowered and engaged employees interact with your customers in such a positive way that those relationships become a major factor in the ability to retain and maintain both.

For more information on sales training, visit CARS OnDemand training at www.cars-council.ca

or contact CARS at 1-888-224-3834.

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If you have completed any of the Inside/Outside Sales CARS OnDemand courses, CARS would appreciate you taking the time to complete a short three-minute survey. To access the survey please go to the CARS website at www.carsondemand.com, log in, and under “Account Details” choose “Participants’ Surveys–Student Survey for the Inside/Outside Sales Training Curricula Evaluation.”