Regardless of what you’re selling and who you are selling to, developing long-term relationships with your prospects is crucial to your businesses success. If you mismanage these crucial relationships, your business is at risk to losing hundreds of thousands of dollars in new business every year.
Lets face it. The cost to acquire new business is expensive as hell. There is no shortage of information online that tells you, the business owner, just how important client retention is. Depending upon the industry you’re in, and what you’re offering, it can range from $20 to multiple hundreds of dollars in costs per new customer.
The real silent killer is the business you don’t get when you, or your employees, fail to live up to what your customer expects or what you sold your customers on in the first place. As I once explained to one of our most successful clients, it’s not the single sell that’s important, it’s repeat business that will make you rich.
While it seems such a simple thing, there is no end to the number of times employees or business owners let their ego get in the way of doing the right thing. When this happens, you are almost always better served by not having taken on the customer than to open the door to that very customer damaging your company reputation.
These clients, whom many would consider most difficult, usually become the clients with whom we have our most valuable relationships. They force each of us to be the best we can be in difficult and trying circumstances. And when we deliver, they will almost always give us new business that adds to our bottom line and makes us a better and stronger business.
When we, as entrepreneurs, look at some of the most successful brands, it’s not just about how much a product or service costs. Factored into this is how satisfied the customer was with the service or product they received that led to that brands growth.
So the next time you find yourself faced with a challenge from a customer, take a step back, try to look at things from their perspective, and see if the problem is with the customer or with the quality of the product or service you delivered.
Relationships matter, and how you manage those relationships will have a direct impact on your bottom line.
Until Next Time
George Chaney
President
SEO King, Inc.
