Customer Retention is the new Growth!

“The Purpose of Business is to Create and Keep a Customer”. Peter Drucker

Retaining your existing Customers is what every business should be focusing on. Over the last few years you have spent your time in finding and winning new business. Therefore you probably have customer contacts saved on written forms, in spreadsheets, on disparate hard drives and if you’re really up to speed, in a centralised customer relationship management (CRM)** database.

If you do not have a CRM, get one installed with the help of those who will be using it and get your data centralised and shared through the business. Next, get all your data cleaned and marketing compliant and perform an 80/20 profile so you know who your best 20% is. Concentrate on this segment before moving on to the 80% to get them up the value chain.

“80% of your future sales will come from 20% of your customer base.” (Small Business Trends, 2020)

To retain your Customers follow this strategy:

1. Keep your Customers informed with relevant updates to match their requirements

Now is the time to talk and empathise with your existing customers to understand what their concerns are for their future and how you can help them – not sell to them. Once you know this, keep them informed with relevant resources that will help them get the most out of your products or services such as PDF’s, how-to videos and helpful e-books.

2. Agree an engagement process that your Customer is happy with

Every Customer has experienced a journey with you, from the time they first contacted you, to becoming a Customer. You need to understand what that journey is and ask your customer how best to keep in touch with them i.e phone, email, social media, etc 

3. Customer retention starts with your team

The relationship you have with your Customer starts from the first moment someone in your organisation either gets in contact or is contacted. Make sure that the products and services you provide fits with the requirements of your Customer and provide the benefits they are looking for. This is the start of what should be a long term relationship so building trust is paramount. It has to be a good fit for you and your Customer.

4. Get feedback from the solutions that you provide to your Customer

Keep asking your Customers, within reason, how they are using your products/services. There may be things that you can do better or maybe something that the Customer may want further down the line. Again this enhances the relationship. Select your top 10 Customers and have an in-depth discussion with them to find out more about them and why they are happy to do business with you.

5. Treat your best customers as VIP’s

This comes back to your top 20%. Nurture and support these customers and they will become advocates for your business. This in turn will mean that you get some positive testimonials and also referrals to other contacts of theirs. Loyalty has to be earned so make sure you treat your top Customers with special attention like access to up and coming developments, invitations to unique events and even gifts to celebrate personal events like moving home or birthdays.

Creating and KEEPING your existing Customers should be the main focus of your business. It costs 7 to 10 times more to win a new customer than it does to keep your existing ones.

“5% Customer Retention = 75%+ increase in profitability” (BAIN)

Contact Jamie here

Are You Customer Data Ready?

Do you regularly sort out, clean and centralise all your Customer data? During the Covid pandemic this was an ideal time to do this but now that we have come out the other side, the need is still there. So consider all the sources of information you have that relate to your customers and prospects and commit to storing them all in one centralised and secure environment – effectively a Customer Relationship Management System (CRM).

As your business has grown over the years, you have accumulated multitudinous amounts of customer data which lies within box files, business cards, spreadsheets and in your PC’s, laptops and servers which you are using across your company’s departments.

Once you have done this;

1. 
   

   You will have relevant data so you are only talking to those customers and prospects where you are most likely to do business so saving time and effort

   
   
2. 
   

   This in turn will mean you can target your marketing more accurately and save on your campaign costs.

   
   
3. 
   

   You will undoubtedly have an edge against your competitors as many businesses don’t manage their data as they should, especially when it comes to finding out more about their Customers.

   
   

5 steps to get Customer Data Ready:

1. Clean your Data

   1. 
      

      Find out where your data currently resides – as paper documents in files, on spreadsheets, on other PCs, on servers

      
      
   2. 
      

      Where you can, export that data as a CSV file into one master spreadsheet. Physically add data from paper files onto the spreadsheet. Column headings should include name, address, company and job description (where applicable) products and/or services purchased, value of these products/services, dates bought. Create new columns for any other data captured and populate these accordingly

      
      
   3. 
      

      Organise the data by company or address

      
      
   4. 
      

      Make sure the name of the person/persons are cleaned so you have one contact name e.g Mr J Smith may also have been added as J Smith or James Smith. This is also called de-duplication

      
      

2. Make your Data GDPR Compliant

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      Make sure that the data you now have is checked for compliancy. Only keep those contacts where you are sure that you permission to contact them

      
      

3. Profile Your Data

   1. 
      

      Get all your data onto a spreadsheet and do an 80/20 profile analysis by value so you can see who your best paying customers are.

      
      
   2. 
      

      This top 20% profile will essentially show you the kind of customers you do your best business with. You can then use this to create your avatars or personas and target similar new customers in the future

      
      
   3. 
      

      You can also look to engage with the other 80% and move them up the value chain

      
      

4. Centralise your Data

   1. 
      

      Now that you have clean data, you need to import it into a centralised and secure Customer Relationship Management system (CRM) so all the information can be shared with all the stakeholders in your business.

      
      

5. Talk to your Customers

   1. 
      

      Start talking to your top customers (20%) and understand what their concerns and plans are for the future and how you can help. This is where you start to build a long lasting and trusted relationship

      
      
   2. 
      

      Make sure that you capture all this information in your CRM

      
      
   3. 
      

      After this, look to engage with the rest of your customers (80%) picking those that you feel you can move up your value chain.

      
      

If you want any further clarification on this, please contact Jamie here.

Know and Understand who your best Customers are.Then KEEP them!

Your business is built on a foundation of 3 things. Your Market – Customers, Competition, Unique Sales Benefits. Your Message – who are you going to talk to and how are you going to say it. Your Media – choose the right channel of communication with which to make sure you get the attention of your customers and prospects.

What does your Market look like?

What is your Message?

Through What Media?

Market

Your business relies on Customers to survive. No matter what size your prospect is, it is really important to do your research. The more information you have about your market, your customers’ business, the better prepared you will be and you will demonstrate an interest in their business. Also look for the best type of customers for your business – don’t sell to everyone. Your customer database is your most valuable asset and is vital for your success. To this end you must make sure that your database is up to date, normalised, deduplicated, GDPR compliant and centralised in a CRM.

You must understand your customers:

• What did they buy from you?
• How much did they spend?
• Why did they buy from you?
• What are their profiles? Demographics (Who are they), Geographics (Where are they) and Psychographics (What are they interested in).
• Who are your best and worst customers?

Understanding this will start to show you where you are perceived as “different” in the market place so you know know your Unique Sales Benefit is for your business.

“So what makes your offering different?“

Profiling your existing customer database will help you to understand who your ideal customer is – this is called an Avatar or Persona. It is likely that 80% of your income will come from 20% of your customers. Once you have a profile of your customers, you will be clear as to what sort of businesses typically want to do business with you. You can then use the intelligence to create or purchase new suspects/prospects. Furthermore, make sure that you are maximizing your effort by developing stronger relationships with your best customers – the 20% – so you can up sell and cross sell. From the 80%, select those you wish to nurture to turn into better customers and then manage the lowest 20% and “keep in touch” over longer intervals as you don’t want to waste time on those customers who are not doing much business with you.

Your customer list is really important to get right – they are your lifeblood so it is important to nurture and maintain this list at regular intervals to keep the database clean and compliant.

And when you do communicate your product/service offerings, this understanding will ensure you know your customers extremely well and be able to offer them timely and relevant solutions to meet their business needs.

By adopting this process will help you to develop a strong relationship with your customers and will be the reason why your customers buy from you. Like any good relationship, keep in touch with them and ask why they buy from you and how they want to grow their business as it is possible that you could plan for new product/services to supply them with in future.

Finally, know your competition by understanding what they are able to offer and if any are being considered by your customers. The stronger the relationship that you build with your customers, the more likely they will stay with you.

Message

Once you understand who you are talking to – and once you have segmented and profiled the database, you need to think about what messages will be most relevant.

For example; the top 20% get upsell, cross sell and personal contact. 50% to 60% get a nurture approach and the bottom 20% or so get the polite “Let’s re-negotiate our business relationship” letter. The objective is to get them to buy your new product or service – NEW being the operative word. If something is not new or different; why should anyone want to buy it – providing of course you have ascertained that it is relevant to them.

Any message needs to switch on the emotions in a person. It needs to appeal to their desires and get them to do something.

All your communication should follow the A.I.D.A principle – Attention. Interest. Desire. Action.

So when targeting one of your selected segments, rather than have a headline which says:

“This “product/service” will give you the edge you have been looking for”

Say instead for example:

“7 important reasons why your competitors will be sorry that you bought “this product/service”.

 A headline like this will get the ATTENTION of the reader. The purpose of this headline is to get them to read the next line and get their INTEREST. This creates a DESIRE and finally a call to ACTION. Writing powerful copy is an art on its own right and you need skilled people to create and deliver this.

You then can test your message with small campaigns (e.g Google AdWords and Facebook) that leverage the internet with different headlines. You can then monitor and measure results using Google analytics or similar so your communication can be fine-tuned so that only the best results are being paid for.

To stand apart from the rest you need to “Break the Mould”. People like to buy the unusual not the ordinary.

Media

All very well to have your Market and your Message – but how are you going to get it out there?

I have already mentioned online media like Google AdWords and Facebook as these are low cost and high return options if done properly.

Traditionally companies blanket the media options using, to name but a few, newspapers, radio, email, leaflets and direct mail and where they can afford it, TV. Not a bad thing to do but the targeting can be too broad.

There is still a place for traditional media such as Direct Mail and many company owners still like receive post which when done creatively, can work wonders. Leave the TV and radio to the big bigger organisations as these are not for limited budgets.

Now you know what your Avatar or Persona looks like, you can concentrate on where these target customers live; the geography – and the who your market is; the demographics – and what motivates them to buy; the psychographics. Then choose the media to fit the message more tightly.

 Conclusion

Getting and KEEPING Customers should be the main focus of any business and should be driven from the top. Using a CRM solution tailored to your business processes you can develop the relationship and the TRUST of a customer and as a result they will become a powerful ally for you and refer you to other businesses.

Contact Jamie here if you would like to talk further about this and other ideas.

Are you Aware of these 8 Reasons to have a CRM in Your Business?

Having a CRM helps you to retain your existing Customers and develop a strong relationship with them which leads to greater loyalty and recommendation

Here are 8 good reasons to have a CRM in your business:

1. Companies that use CRM successfully have improved their sales by 29% (Salesforce)

Data on the effectiveness of CRM tools can be hard to find. This is because there are many measurable factors that cause these tools to either fail or succeed. The latest and most trustworthy data comes from Salesforce, a major player in the CRM market. In 2013, it was reported that properly using CRM can greatly improve business effectiveness. Salesforce stats show that successful CRM implementation can boost sales by 29%, increase sales productivity by 34%, and sharpen sales forecast accuracy by 42%.

2. By using CRM, customer retention and satisfaction rates increase by 47%. (Capterra)

Surely some of the key stats in demonstrating the importance of CRM when running a sales business are customer satisfaction and retention. Customer retention – the company’s ability to keep its customers and inspire brand loyalty – is crucial when evaluating the effectiveness of your CRM. Capterra reports that CRM software boosts both retention and satisfaction rates by 47%. These impressive stats are sure to encourage further growth of the CRM market.

3. Conversion rates can rise by up to 300% using CRM. (IBM)

Converting leads or potential customers into buyers is the bread and butter of any sales business. That’s why everyone is wondering “Will CRM improve my conversion rates?”. The stats we have say yes – proper CRM implementation can lead to an increase in conversion rates of up to 300%.

4. Customers spend between 20% and 40% more if they’re engaged by a company using CRM, 2017 data shows. (LinkedIn)

As research conducted by Cloudswave suggests, using CRM in sales can increase the amount of purchases customers make with your company. When a company that uses CRM engages a customer, they are likely to spend 20-40% more on their next purchase with the same company.

5. 2014 data indicates that the ROI for CRM is $8.71 per $1 spent. (Nucleus Research)

The stats provided by Nucleus Research concerning ROI (return on investment) suggest that investing in CRM will pay off. For every $1 you spend, you make $8.71 back. That is if the CRM is correctly implemented, of course. This translates into an impressive 771% ROI.

6. 6% of sales professionals say that CRM tools have a significant impact on their company’s bottom line. (LinkedIn)

Among those surveyed in LinkedIn’s 2016 State of Sales report, approximately a third of respondents said that using CRM tools was important for their business. Another 29.6% described their usage of CRM tools as impactful.

7. Only 22% of companies using non-mobile CRM meet their sales quotas compared to 65% of those that use mobile CRM systems. (Innoppl)

Mobile CRM leads the way. Just as cloud-based CRM is gaining momentum, the need for flexibility and ease of access has led to the increased popularity of mobile CRM, which refers to CRM tools you can access from your phone, tablet, or other devices. Not only is mobile CRM popular, it’s also effective. Research by InnoPpl shows that 65% of companies that use mobile CRM meet their quotas, compared to 22% of those that use non-mobile versions. Switching to mobile and cloud-based systems is the new CRM trend.

8. Customer satisfaction will become the most important factor in business by 2020. (Walker)

A report on the future of sales published by Walker predicts that customer satisfaction will become a key differentiator as soon as next year. According to the report, customer satisfaction will surpass price and quality in terms of importance by 2020. Results from this report point out that 86% of customers are willing to pay 25% more for a better customer experience.

To find out more about setting up your CRM, contact Jamie here.