Small Business Managers - Beat Competition by Applying 10 Vital Tactics to Keep Customers
- Take an overall approach.
Demonstrate how your product or service can help them accomplish long-term goals.
Explain to them that you are there for the long term. - Speak their language.
Don't use your industry words, use theirs.
Show them that you have a deeper understanding of their business than your competition. - Be a source of market information and intelligence.
Dedicate yourself to finding new details, methods and insights that can help your customers succeed.
Give valuable information. - Know who the customer is today, not yesterday.
Your customers are undergoing a process of constant change.
You have to know how to serve your customers' current needs, not their needs from a month or year ago.
Stay current with changes in your customer's situation.
To do this, you require frequent contact, asking questions and listening. - Point out what incredible value they're getting.
What are you doing for your customers that provide long-term and short-term value.
Let them know what you're doing that goes above and beyond the expected or the normal. - Make it the honeymoon again.
The first five weeks of any relationship are exciting.
Everyone loves everyone.
Gestures of appreciation are made spontaneously on a regular basis.
Then it starts to get old and we don't try as hard anymore to make a great first impression.
Turn the clock back go to that honeymoon period.
- Make them tell you how to be better.
Don't ask your customers if they're happy.
Ask them how you can be better for them.
They will appreciate that you are making the constant effort and you will gain some information that can lock in loyalty. - Find out who's trying to horn in on your relationship.
Your competitors are always trying to steal your customers away.
They may be feeding your customers misinformation.
Find out what they're whispering in your customers' ears.
If necessary, provide evidence that the competition is wrong.
Match or beat any value that your competition if offering.
(You have to beat their price.
You have to beat their value). - Continuously audit your "business easy factor" Look at every point of contact you have with your customers, including Web site, telephone calls, invoices, or anywhere else you have contact with your customer and see how you can be easier to do business with.
Its the number one decider in business-to-business buying decisions. - Have a face-to-face, personal "thank you" meeting.
Don't discount the significance of expressing appreciation to your customers.
Get in your car or on a plane, and tell them in person how very much you appreciate their business.
Send a "thank you" card or write a personal letter.
It could prove to be your best insurance against customer loss to the competition.
Never forget your existing customers.
The biggest reason why customers leave suppliers is because they didn't like the way they were treated by the small business.
Whilst it is important that you are competitive with price and quality remember that the human side of doing business is the key motivator for your customers to carry on purchasing from you