Once you bag your perfect business client you'll want to try and keep that client for as long as possible, because...
- Obtaining new customers is the most expensive part of your marketing expenditure
- Selling to existing customers is the easiest and cheapest way to make more sales
- If you slack off and lose a customer, then that customer might not be too happy with you, and will probably tell a bunch of people
- Conversely, the longer a client stays with you, the longer the referral window stays open
So how do we keep our business relationships blissfully happy and productive? Its all about maintaining a positive mindset towards your customers, but before I talk about how you're going to treat your clients, let me touch on clients that just aren't a good match with you... so to speak.
When I say customer and client relationships that aren't a good match, I'm talking about problem clients. Clients who haggle over price, constantly drain your time with niggling unfounded complaints, and who generally drive you up the wall. If you haven't ever thought of dismissing a client before, then tell me what business you're in and I'll join you! Most of us have clients that take our time and energy away from more deserving clients, and you owe it to yourself to politely let your problem customer know they're no longer welcome.
Back to the customers you have rosy and warm relationships with -- we need to make sure we don't fall into the same traps that marriages seem to breed in our relationships. We don't want to:
- Take our customers for granted
- Neglect them
- Stop talking to them
- Stop serving them the way you said you would at the beginning
- Avoid them
- Talk rudely to them, and
- We simply don't want to give them a good reason to leave us
So to keep your clients, just take my list above and flip it.
Make sure your customers feel loved and appreciated, lavish them with attention (that you can afford), talk to them often about their fears, hopes, dreams, frustrations and concerns, serve them better than you said you would, keep in regular touch with them so they don't forget you, always talk politely and respectfully towards them, and find out every way you can to keep them enraptured and in love with you and your company.
There's a lot of common sense ways we can achieve that, and I'll clue you in on a few of those soon... but I'm sure you can come up with a few in the mean time, right?
