How welcoming is your small business?
Welcoming your new customers on board is a critical factor in the overall success of your small business marketing, and indeed of your business sustainability.
As the old saying goes ‘there’s many a slip twixt cup and mouth’ – and moving your prospective customers across the line from signing on the dotted line to really feeling like a customer of yours is a crucial hurdle to master.
There’s a difference between a customer, and a profitable customer. A customer has paid you some money. A profitable customer has paid you enough money to cover how much you spent on acquiring and fulfilling their business. And, naturally, it’s more of the latter you want.
Which means keeping hold of the business you win, i.e. customer retention. There are a few simple things you can do to increase your retention rates. Here are my top three for you…
1. Have a clear and welcoming on-boarding process
Have a think about all those things that your new customer will need to get started using your products and services, and pull it all together into some sort of welcome pack. Things to include might be:
- Contact details and profiles for people they’re working with – photos can be a nice touch too.
- Numbers, passwords, log-in details they may need.
- Set-up guides, user manuals, tips and tricks for using or getting the most from your stuff.
- How to get in touch if there’s a question or a problem.
- Money matters – an accounts contact, confirmation of their payment dates, invoicing schedule, etc.
- A checklist of information you may need from them.
- A thank you… even a simple signed card can be a nice touch.
2. Have check-in points
Think about the points at which people are using your products or building a relationship with your business. When might be a good time to check in and see how they’re getting on? Have a few really simple questions to run through at critical times, like project milestones, before their first bill arrives, when a discount is coming to an end, etc. You could do this with a triggered email survey, a five minute phone call, or a chat over a coffee. However you do it, just asking how things are going will give people a warm glow, and of course highlight if there are any problems for you to address.
3. Be helpful
Being helpful, not salesy, is probably the best sales advice I can give anyone. And that goes for existing customers as much as potential new ones. If you have an email newsletter, make sure they know about it and can sign-up. If your blog has useful hints and tips, or you’re running online tutorials, etc. make sure that your existing customers are invited. It might be that you set aside a certain number of free tickets to paid events for them, or even offer to drop in to re-run an event as a lunchtime session for their team. At the very least, drop them a personal note if you’ve penned a blog about something they’ve asked.
Keeping the business you’ve put time and money into generating is probably the most important thing you can do. It makes the most of what you’ve spent, it increases your chances of selling more to those people and it builds your reputation through having genuinely happy customers on the books.
By Bryony Thomas | Chief Clear Thinker | Clear Thought Consulting Ltd | @bryonythomas | www.clear-thought.co.uk
You may also be interested in:
- Video Tutorial: Reducing customer churn by addressing the whole buying decision
- Blog: 20 common profit leaks in small businesses
Clear Thought Consulting works with small businesses, equipping them with the marketing strategies, suppliers, skills and set-up that they need to become bigger businesses. We do this by planning and delivering 12-month marketing transformation programmes – supporting a small business through a step-by-step process to making marketing pay. We firmly believe that when you can’t out-spend your competition, you have to out-think them.
Published on 13 July 2011
