subject: Tips For Client Retention [print this page] Customer retention is an important function of the sales role as taught on good sales training courses.
Retain customers and deepen your relationship with them with a firm customer bonding policy. Do not make the mistake of letting one area go. Prepare yourself for two different dangers.
Just one of the two dangers is enough to lose a customer. A competitor with a more promising offer will tempt customers away even if they are contented with your service. No matter how enticing your offer might be, the customer will not purchase from you if they are discontented with you. So, develop strategies against both dangers and employ them simultaneously.
Ensuring the tiniest interruption in your relationship with the customer is put right is a must. Compensation in a different area will not work, as a shortage in one place cannot be made good by excess in another. Just as you cannot satisfy a thirsty person with chocolate.
How do you avoid irritating your customers?
You can prevent your customers from becoming irritated if you and your staff live up to their expectations. They have expectations on two levels: relationship expectations and material expectations.
Relationship expectations
If there is something wrong with the relationship between you and your customer, they can very easily find a stick to beat you with. So first of all take care that the partnership is in order.
What can you do to foster the relationship? Principally there are three areas in which your customer expects something from you:
Keep your promises
Keep to the dates you have named. Ring back if the customer asks you to. Send documents you promised them immediately. Pass on messages that they leave you to the relevant office at once.
Get your office colleagues to share the same attitude.
The customer wants to be taken seriously Do not correct or lecture them. Do not behave like a know-all. Acknowledge their expertise. Do not embarrass or show them up.
Behave in such a way that your customer will feel you respect them. They are your partner, after all, and should remain so.
Be as competent as your customer expects you to be
Continue educating yourself so you are better than the competition. Learn at home too. Attend sales training courses. Read specialist literature. Listen to lectures. Get training whenever you have the opportunity. Learn from other people and their mistakes. Cultivate your strengths. Ask your colleagues when you do not know what to do.
Competence levels need to be raised until you are the best of experts and the same opportunity should be given to your office staff. Encourage them to work on their own knowledge.
Material expectations
The best relationships in the world are no use if your customer's material expectations are not fulfilled.
Prove to your customer that your goods and services are more than fulfilling their expectations by fulfilling the following four areas. By doing this you will show customer that you are clearly better than your competitors.
The customer expects the product/service to live up to your promises
Take care of this yourself. Make enquiries of the customer service department. Point out to the customer the consequences of incorrect handling. Make suggestions for improvements. Remind your own customer service of their duties.
Give the greatest help at first
Offer your customer a complete introduction. Ask if there is anything they have not understood. Let them practice by themselves. Enquire whether everything works. Recommend a special training course to them.
Offer your customer recommendations on application
Give more tips than are contained in the operating instructions. Show the customer possibilities that you have learnt from other users. Continue giving useful tips, even after quite some time. Pick up their ideas.
Correct mistakes quicker than others
React at once to calls for help. Arrange cover for evenings and times when you are unavailable. Send help at once, if you can. The customer also pays more for rapid assistance.
Implementing these points will ensure that you are making a big effort to retain your customers. Experience has repeated proven that carrying out these actions as covered on good sales training courses has a positive effect on customer retention.
