A seasoned professional salesman once said to some new recruits, "No customer will leave you as long as it is to his or her advantage to stay. Your job is to make sure that there is an advantage in the continued relationship, and that your customer is fully aware of it." It almost seems too simple a statement to be valid - and yet the logic is powerful.
The reason many salespeople lose good customers is the lack of a plan for keeping them. Once they focus, these salespeople find that all they have to do is give customers the attention they deserve.
There are five simple steps to setting up a customer conservation program:
1. Identify your customers. Who buys from you now? Keep a list of everyone who has bought from you, even if only once.
2. Determine how much they are buying. Write down the approximate annual volume you get from each customer on your list.
3. Rate each customer by potential. Rank the customers in descending order according to annual purchase volume. Assign ratings A-B-C according to their potential purchase volume.
- A - top 15%
- B - next 20%
- C - final 65
4. Analyze your customers. Ask yourself questions such as "How can I raise a B customer to an A?" "When is this customer due to replace a current model?" "How much does this customer usually spend?" "How can I increase that amount?" "Am I spending enough time on this valuable customer?"
5. Plan your strategy. Set up a definite program to make small customers bigger, get all possible business from a regular customer - plus friends and relatives - and increase the occasional customer to a regular one.
