A bright shiny client retention strategy treats existing clients like the solidly and brightly shining golden treasure they are. Instead of glittering baubles of uncertain worth.
Consider that the success of existing clients is the key for your business growth strategy.
Yet, far too often, once the contract is consummated, existing clients are shunted off “somewhere” in the organization. Then, they are stored within “someone’s” CRM or Project Management Office system. At that point, they can become disconnected from the pulse of an organization.
Consider, then, how many opportunities your organization has to ignore or forget about your client retention base. Instead of continuously keeping them top-of-mind, you only admire how brightly they shine every now-and-then. Perhaps, paying attention on a quarterly basis, when profit and loss analysis is scheduled.
Often, chasing bright shiny new clients distracts you from equally paying continuous attention to brightly shining existing clients.
Yet, consider that bright shiny new client objects are unproven. For starters, you really do not know what you have to work with. Until after you spend too much time chasing what appears to be substantial leads, only to have them evaporate due to misaligned intentions. Or, you create too many iterations of a project design. Then, that bright shiny new client object shops your designs around, eventually selecting a different vendor, based on price.
Ponder whether existing clients would treat you in the same manner? Then, why not treat them more respectfully?
You see, a solid client retention strategy is implemented during pre-sale and at time of sale. In fact, customer retention is a never-ending continuum. Not an either-or, optional, or when-convenient one. Regardless of the size of your organization or association.
Value your client retention strategy as the foundational core of a solid business growth strategy. Within this business growth strategy, no existing customer’s loyalty is ever assumed or taken for granted.
To learn more about how to value your brilliantly shining existing clients, take the next steps. Isn’t it time?
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Babette Ten Haken delivers her One Millimeter Mindset™ speaking programs and workshops to organizations and associations, like yours, who want to leverage collaborative business models and a profitable workforce to retain the customers and members you work so hard to win. Her playbook of collaboration hacks, Do YOU Mean Business? is available on Amazon.com. Babette’s speaker profile is on the espeakers platform.
©2019 One Millimeter Mindset™ / Sales Aerobics for Engineers®, Ann Arbor MI. I appreciate it when you share the link to this post on social streams. However, to re-post or republish the content of this post, kindly email babette@salesaerobicsforengineers.com for permission and guidelines. I thank you for respecting intellectual capital.
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