Article contributed by Lisa Tierney, Tierney Coaching & Consulting, Inc.
Educate them about what, you may be thinking. Well, consider this, many businesses focus solely on attracting new clients, but you NEED to spend a good chunk of your time retaining current and former clients. These are people you already know to be a good sales potential…they’ve already bought from you!
Take the time to market and sell new products to your old clients and less time trying to sell old products to new clients and you will see a drastic change in your sales, client quality and branding position.
Here are a couple of key elements to use to retain your current clients:
- Stay in contact: This means by phone, email, e-newsletter, in person-by pigeon if you have too!
- Post-Purchase Assurance: This means you need to follow up with clients. Your clients need to feel like they are being supported for their purchase and with the item they purchased. How many times have you purchased a product, then felt completely abandoned? Something as simple as a Thank You note with your contact or client service information can go along way in retaining a great client.
- Deals & Guarantees: Always offer your current clients the best deals and guarantees you have. Show them you appreciate their business or even come up with a club specifically to reward loyal clients. You can also do this with a preferred pricing option.
- Integrity: Using good business practices and simply upholding integrity, dignity and honesty go along way with clients. Let’s face it, there’s a lot of swindling and crap out there and the safer and more confident you make your clients feel, the more they will trust you and that makes for an amazingly supportive and loyal client.
There are three cornerstone ideas to a successful business:
- Quality product/service
- Offering useful products/services that solve a problem for or enhance the life of a client
- Offer subjects your clients find interesting
Use this approach of educating your clients and offering them real information and insight and you will be rewarded with loyalty and success.
Stop wasting all your time on new prospects while your current clients fall by the wayside!
As Jay Abraham says, “Your best prospects are your existing clients. If you’ve been putting all your marketing efforts into acquiring new clients, stop and diverts some of your resources into reselling, upselling, cross-selling to those same clients. In every ways possible – through package inserts, regular mailings, special offers – stay in touch with those clients and get them used to buying from you.”
So, there it is! Remember, our FREE test drive can help you put together the resources and tools to do exactly that. We can help you educate your clients and you can watch the benefits pay offer many-fold.