A Business' Greatest Enemy - Richardson Management Pty Ltd

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A Business' Greatest Enemy

You work hard trying to attract attention committing to your strategy and doing everything right, resulting in an increase of customers - but you lose them. They never come back. You did your marketing so well and wisely that you're almost in a state of shock at how your customers have now ignored you.

You treated them well while you were selling to them – they were your best friend. You gave them a good price, knew that the quality you put into your offering matched the quality they got out of it. You assured them that your service was second to none. You smiled and used their name when you said good-bye, thanking them for the sale. And then, after all that caring attention on your part, they completely ignored you, never set foot in your business again.

Do you want to know why they ignored you, why it was so easy for them to put you out of their minds?

It's because you ignored them. It's because you made the sale and then made the grave but all-too-common error of thinking that your job was over. That was a terrible error. The job of selling and marketing does not stop after the sale is made.

But at least you've not alone. Most of your competitors fail to retain the customer due to apathy after the sale. Apathy is the deadliest enemy of selling and marketing.

The opposite of apathy is follow-up. Customers never feel ignored. We do all in our power to intensify the relationship with caring follow-up and loving attention. We know that once we have established a relationship, our product or service is no longer thought of as a commodity. Businesses that offer commodities often lose customers due to competitors offering lower prices. Businesses that form warm relationships transcend being thought of as a commodity and maintain their customer relationships with service and constant contact.

No wonder they don't lose business so readily. People want relationships, want the businesses they patronise to stay in contact, want to feel cared for and not ignored. All successful business people know that their customer relationships are their most precious assets. They know that if customers purchased from them one time and had an enjoyable purchase experience, they are very likely to buy from them again and to provide many referrals over time.

To nourish these kinds of lasting relationships, we can send thank-you notes after the sale -- within 48 hours. We can contact customers within a month of the sale to make certain they are satisfied and have no questions. We can get in touch with customers once again three months after the sale, this time suggesting new items that may tie-in with the original purchase. And three months after that, they make another contact. This kind of follow-up not only prevents dreaded apathy from setting in, but also increases business anywhere from 20% to 300%. That's because customers, in their hearts, silently hope for recognition, acknowledgment, information, advance opportunities to purchase, and new calls to action.

Instead of the kind of apathy that loses customers forever, constant attention and follow-up results in healthy back-end sales. This means repeat sales, ancillary sales and referral sales. And this means big profits to you -- because it costs six times more to sell something to a new prospect than to sell that same thing to an existing customer.

These days, all the true marketing experts ask you to calculate the lifetime value of a customer. If you don't understand the damaging effects of apathy after the sale, that lifetime value is pretty small, probably a few hundred dollars, if that. If you do all in your power to prevent apathy from ever setting it, the lifetime value of each customer may be measured in hundreds of thousands of dollars, maybe even more. You'll profit from the initial sale, from the repeat sales, from the referral sales and from the long, mutually beneficial relationship. It happens only when you defeat the most deadly enemy of business. And now you know how to do that.