Increase Sales, Retain Customers and Gain Referrals

Once you’ve chosen the right business for you, the driving force behind any successful business is a customer retention strategy – to win and keep customers. Establishing customer relationships are also the most effective way to achieve a competitive edge, increase sales, gain referrals and expand revenue opportunities. Success does not come from a single marketing activity or skill, but rather from the mastery of a broad range of integrating sales, marketing, advertising, tools and resources to deliver an exceptional customer experience.

Retain Customers:

• 60% said customer relationship management is critical to their competitive positioning
• Customer relationship increased their e-business 71%
• Customer relationship increased their customer retention, profits and lifetime value by 73%

(source: Survey by Anderson Consulting and Knowledge Systems)

Implementing a customer retention strategy – results showed:

• 13% Increase in revenue growth
• 28% Increase in employee selling time gains
• 17% Increase in employee productivity gains
• 22% Increase in customer satisfaction improvement

(source: Survey by Alexander Group; Sales Lobby.com Newsletter, July 2001)

Why Customers are Lost:

• 1% Death
• 3% Moved
• 5% Better Offer (Other than money)
• 9% Lower Price
• 14% Complaints were ignored
• 68% Lack of interest from the SELLER

Take the last 2 and add them together. The total number of customers you lose is very sad!

Think Big to Grow Big!

Commitment, determination and effort over time.

The “effort over time” is the one that can mess a person up. What exact effort must we take? And for how long?

Success does not happen over night. Working from home is NOT for the timid or meek, quitting is NOT an option. You may get frustrated, you may fall down, you will be challenged…it’s whether you get back up during those times - that counts. You must be able to work around obstacles, become flexible, creative, open minded, learn to multi-task, leverage your time, stay sane and NEVER QUIT!

Do not expect to jump into business for yourself and succeed right out the gate. Success takes work, in any aspect of life (network marketing, mlm, small business owners, sports and so on).

Successful Business Owners have acquired a certain skill set, along with utilizing certain tools and resources to help manage their time and efforts more effectively and efficiently.

Let me say that again…

Successful Business Owners have acquired a certain skill set, along with utilizing certain tools and resources to help manage their time and efforts more effectively and efficiently.

With that, we must understand and apply certain actions each day…week….and month, to grow our businesses (this is done through tracking and conversions).

It doesn’t stop there. All of this requires a marketing budget and people to talk to, (traffic generation - I prefer people coming to me).

We must spend money, to make money. I am not saying the more money you spend, the bigger your business. Marketing dollars must be spent wisely and tracked. If you spend money in the wrong places, you will become frustrated, probably rack up a bill, and even worse….you may give up and quit. Always look at your ROI (return on investment). Be sure to track your marketing and advertising dollars, and record what is giving you the best return.

Once you start building, another important factor is a Customer Relationship and Client Retention Strategy.

Now, you may be thinking this sounds silly to devote a whole system to…but it is so very important, so much so, it can make or break your business!

Every month we are not in contact with our clients, we lose 10% of our influence. It is 5 times harder to obtain a new client than it is to keep our existing. 90% of Professionals say they do not have a Customer Retention Plan in place. They are working their businesses 5 times harder than those that do have a strategy in place. The cost of replacing clients can be 6-7 times more expensive.

Do I have a Retention Strategy in place?

You bet I do! This alone can greatly benefit your business by retaining customers/clients, gaining referrals, increasing sales! This is a very important piece of the bigger picture.

This will also help you obtain referrals, which will in return start to grow your business. As your business grows, you now have that same service in place to RETAIN your business! You are starting with a reliable wheel, with no leaks….in which you can continue to roll with.

Let me tell you…in my past business adventures (network marketing) I was taught all the tips, I hung out with some of the top dogs, picked their brains and learned some things….but believe me….I barely got anywhere fast!

I also learned some things that they are NOT sharing with others.

Did I mention, I am a bit stubborn and strong willed?

I WILL NOT and DO NOT do home parties, I do not do the 3 foot rule, will never make another list of 300, will not attend regular hotel meetings, will not ask my friends and family to help me out in my new business (by holding a party for me), will not make claims of income about 4 who get 4 who get 4 and how simple it is. By the way, the 4 who get 4….after just 10 rounds of this – you would supposedly have over 1 million customers (1,048,576) in your business….if it was that simple and it actually worked – we’d all be doing it!

Fact is, this is NOT simple.

Anyone can do this and no experience necessary, couldn’t be further from the truth.

Successful Business Owners have acquired a certain skill set, along with utilizing certain tools and resources to help manage their time and efforts more effectively and efficiently.

One of my past upline’s said to me once “Kelly, you are thinking too hard into this…..keep it simple, do not over complicate things, you don’t have to re-invent the wheel.” So I thought…..”ummm, you’re right, but see, I am thinking big and want to grow big.”

I don’t want to re-invent any wheel per say…but I do want to obtain a big strong solid foundation, and I wanted a shiny black wheel to role with.

So why was it, even though I was doing exactly what he was telling me -- it wasn’t working? How was he bringing in oodles of customers (78 people one month – last I checked) and it was so simple?

Come to find out…the wheel he was rolling with, wasn’t all that shiny after all. When I looked very closely at what I thought was beautiful and shiny….turned out to have several small leaks in it.

He was loosing his customers almost as fast as he was gaining them.

I needed more than what he was doing. I wanted a reliable shiny black wheel WITHOUT leaks.

Do you think he had a customer retention strategy in place? No, he did not.

Watch the little things; a small leak will sink a great ship. ~Benjamin Franklin

You may have heard of Tom Hopkins, a top sales legend in the real estate industry. After 3 years, 100% of Tom’s sales came from referrals. He is utilizing a retention and referral strategy.

Joe Girard, car salesman, is in the Genius Book of Records for greatest sales person in the world, for selling the most cars. In his career, he sold around 13,000 cars which equals about 6 cars a day! He too, was implementing a customer retention and referral strategy.

I could possibly write a book here….but I’m not a writer, so I’ll do my best writing articles, blogs, newsletters and educating people.

A Customer Retention Strategy is not the only answer, but it is a great start. Request a consultation below. We can assess where you are at in your business, look at where you would like to go, address any challenges and provide solutions to assist in growing and keeping your business that you worked so hard for.

There are 4 major reasons why people fail in business. One of the 4 is “action” or lack of, or not knowing what to do (to find out the other 3 things you will need, request a consultation below).

The prospecting process goes something like this - you qualify, you schedule the consultation, you conduct the appointment, get a commitment and then follow up and follow through.

Within that process, there are certain areas that may be lacking (which can also cause a person to fail or become very frustrated):

• Relying on only 1-2 methods of contact with prospects
  • e-mail marketing is not as effective anymore, delivery rate and spam laws
• Ineffective follow up & follow through
  • Average company loses 50% of its customers every 5 years... cost of replacing them can be 6-7 times more expensive
  • Example of success is in the followup: Joe Girard is in the Guiness Book Of World Records as "The Greatest Salesperson In The World." Within his 15 year career, he sold exactly 13,001 retail cars. That is more cars per year, sold by himself, than most dealers sell total in their entire career. Together, with the help of his two assistants, he would send out over 13,000 handwritten cards a month. They weren't even cards designed to sell, just simple "thank you’s" and customer appreciation cards. From that, he received a flood of business. Ok great…yea right, I don’t know about you, but I certainly don’t have the time….
  • 82% of all homeowners can not tell you the name of their Realtor, if they bought their home more than two years ago.
• Poor connection and motivation of team
  • 5x harder to find prospect than it is to keep existing
  • 5% increase in customer loyalty will yield 20%-80% to our bottom line profit….much wiser to spend money on customer retention than acquisition
• Not utilizing referrals
  • Example of success from referrals: Tom Hopkins (real estate - a top leader in industry and sales legend): by his 3rd year in sales; 100% of his business came from referrals by sending cards!
• Not utilizing certain tools and resources to better leverage and manage your time
  • Request a complimentary consultation below, where we can assess your business needs, answer questions and guide you in the right direction.

Show You Care and Build Better Relationships and Customer Loyalty - in about 60 seconds!

The average company loses 50% of its customers every 5 years…cost of replacing them can be 6-7 times more expensive.

5% increase in customer loyalty will yield 20%-80% to our bottom line profit.

On average a person needs to be exposed to a form of advertising 7 times before they will respond. Postcards can help people remember you and your product or service. People lead very busy lives these days. They may really like your product or service, but simply forget. Life gets in the way; sometimes timing is not right when you initially talk with someone. Or perhaps you have an existing customer who really loves your product, but just forgets to call to reorder.

To find out more about what I would recommend for Customer Retention – Request a Customer Retention Consultation below.

Complimentary Consultation Request: Together we can help assess where you are at in your business, where you are wanting to go, address any challenges you might be facing, and answer questions. We then help provide a solution to your specific needs.