There are too many companies that do not realize the importance of the customer relationship when it comes to the primary measure of the company’s success: revenue.
Chasing the “New”
It’s only natural that, when a company is getting up and running, they’re going to be primarily focused on new business. There’s nothing else, yet—they haven’t been around long enough to have built up a customer base. And of course, new business will always be important.
It’s a sad thing, though, to see a company that’s been around for several years that still concentrates solely on new business, without putting at least an equal amount of attention on their customer base. They are sitting right on top of but neglecting, a million-dollar endless source of income.
Theoretically, a customer already sold on your product or service is going to be a far easier sale for more of that company’s products or services. When you take marketing costs into account, a company’s cost-of-sale for an existing customer is considerably lower than for a new one.
Beyond the Close
We say “theoretically” above because this only works if the customer relationship has been properly attended to, with each and every sale. In other words, the sale does not end at the close. It is not enough to “just make the sale” and move on. The final stage of customer relationship involves the crucial delivery stage of your product or service. It is also where the buying cycle begins all over again.
We believe that selling is an exchange where both parties win. The better the “exchange,” the more your new client will make the decision to retain your services and become a lifelong customer. To state it simply, the better your client is serviced, the more that client will be a continuing source of revenue.
Through properly servicing them and maintaining the customer relationship, your customer base is a never-ending source of revenue.
The 3 Flows
There are 3 flows of potential prospects that should be coming into your company, and carefully monitored:
1. Marketing leads and reaches, new prospects that are flowing directly from marketing.
2. Referrals from happy customers (which we will be taking up in a separate blog).
3. Happy customers continuing to buy more products and services.
If you have all 3 of these working, you are not going to have a scarcity of prospects to sell to. If you are missing one of those 3, then you run the risk of scarcity, which places more pressure on your sales process. If there is too much pressure on the sales process, you are going to make mistakes.
There cannot be enough said about the customer relationship. As stated earlier, too many salespeople move beyond that customer once they get that close. But if you want to build a lifelong, ever-after affluent company, you must establish great relationships with all your clients.
There is much more to learn about the Customer Relationship.
