Are you concerned about retaining existing IIoT customers?
After all, software, product, service and equipment lifecycles are fairly lengthy in manufacturing and industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) environments.
If you are puzzled about how to make your customer retention strategy more effective, I invite you to join me on June 14 for my BrightTALK webinar on why customer retention is both an art form as well as a strategy. You can register by clicking this link.
Once secured, lengthy contracts which characterize this complex selling environment give many sellers a false sense of security. It’s easy to tune out and check out of what seems to be a lengthy customer lifecycle.
At least until it’s time to renew those contracts.
Retaining existing IIoT customers deserves a non-traditional strategy.
First of all, do you have a traditional perspective about who takes care of the post-sale customer experience? Once the customer is acquired, responsibility for customer care, experience, success and wellbeing becomes the responsibility of a multitude of sometimes nameless and faceless internal teams.
Second, traditional sellers are not as highly compensated for upselling, cross-selling and renewing existing customers as they are for closing new customer contracts. So they gravitate to targets offering higher rate of commissions.
As a result, sellers tend to take their eyeballs off the customer, post-sale. Not only that. These sellers marginalize or ignore all the folks responsible for implementing customer retention strategy. Consequently, these sellers miss out on critical puzzle pieces. Those puzzle pieces are mission-critical scenarios impacting not only size of renewal contract but also potentially resulting in customer defection.
Locate the missing puzzle pieces in your customer retention strategy. Join me on June 14 for my BrightTALK webinar on why customer retention is both an art form as well as a strategy. You can register by clicking this link.
Retaining existing IIoT customers is both an art form and a strategy.
Instead of wondering “What just happened?” at renewal time, consider the business value of continuously focusing on “What’s Next?” Your internal customer retention resources wish you would pay more attention to what they do. So do your existing customers.
Consider the comparative value of retaining existing IIoT customers versus cost of acquiring new ones. Increasing customer retention rates by as little as 5% can result in increased profitability ranging from 25% to 95% depending on industry type.
Do I have your attention now? Your account strategy includes all of the puzzle pieces involved in acquiring new customers as well as retaining them.
And by the way, the cost of replacing / acquiring new customers is 5 times the cost of retaining them. Ouch!
Let’s face it, the entire field of sales is evolving. So is customer retention strategy.
Most folks who have been selling for a while are set in their ways. They hold on dearly to what’s worked in the past. However, things are not quite the same, today, as they were yesterday, are they?
When it comes down to the solving the complex puzzle of retaining existing IIoT customers, your internal resources have considerable skills. These folks are your greatest assets in driving value through your customers’ organizations.
Do you know who these internal resources are?
That’s why today, more than ever, it is mission-critical for not only top performers but all tiers of sales professionals to collaborate with all their internal colleagues within as well as outside of the sales organization.
Each one of these talented individuals possesses their own specific key to the puzzle of continuously and successfully executing customer retention.
Continuously mining these cross-functional skills sets and perspectives constructs the entire value stream puzzle that drives a rock-solid IIoT customer retention strategy.
My professional mantra is: Depending on where we sit around the table, we all see the same things differently. These differences create opportunities to acquire and retain customers.
Perhaps it’s time for you to develop a fresh perspective to break out from traditional mindset? Is it time to learn a new puzzle?
Then join me on June 14 for my BrightTALK webinar on why customer retention is both an art form as well as a strategy. You can register by clicking this link.
I look forward to working with you!
Babette Ten Haken writes, speaks, coaches and consults about collaborative value creation for customer retention. She humanizes the Voice of the industrial Internet of Things ecosystem by facilitating workforce collaboration. Contact Babette to discuss how she can bring her programs to life within your organization.
Image author: zentilia. Image source: Fotolia
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