Do you have INTENTIONAL retention?

"There is only one boss.  The customer.  And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else." 

~Sam Walton (Walmart) 

What are you doing to keep your existing customers?  If you haven't examined your organizations behavior in this regard, it is time to wake up and stop being complacent.

I've sold for many organizations and been involved with keeping customers happy (key ingredient to ongoing relationship) with diverse structures in sales coverage, territories and managing relationships.  However, I have to say, very few had, if any, had a retention strategy.

Most organizations leave it up to their sales and marketing teams to be the keepers of customer perception.  Some even have pow wows with the big wigs to shake hands and hob nob to convey appreciation for the business.

Yet what happens if there is a savvy organization out you by savvy marketing message or a sharp sales pro who can infiltrate the fortress of your customer, shed doubt on the relationship, offer a better "deal", make you look bad?  Can you withstand it?  In the wide world of business, especially with economic turmoil, expenses are scrutinized relentlessly.  

I am going to hazard a guess, that most organizations are able to easily provide proof and documentation on the following:

• go to market strategy

• sales structure

• customer profile

• delivery

• pricing 

• marketing

• web presence

Do you have a strategy to retain existing customers?

Far fewer can articulate their strategy to retain  existing customers.  If so, more than likely it falls on marketing and sales:

• face to face appointments

• reviews of service delivery commitments

• warm and fuzzy outbound marketing programs

• direct mail, email, and campaigns to keep in touch with the customer

• events, promotions, webinars, technical support

It is great if you have all of those going on and those responsible are held accountable for:

• increasing revenue

• building client base

• brand awareness

• referral programs

But what about plain old retention?  How do you define your program?  Do you leave it up to your customer to ask for more help with:

• frequency discounts

• options to upgrade 

• changing needs:  growth, technology, globalization

• evolving regulations impacting them or their industry

I have to tell you honestly:  if your customer is going to go through all the trouble to ask you for your help, they may as well put it out there to see if anyone else can provide better options.  What does that spell for you: RISK.

The 80% / 20% Rule

It is a known fact that 80 percent of your sales comes from 20 percent of your customers. So why aren't you protecting that 80 percent?  Are you doing everything in your power to ensure that those 80 percent are serviced the hell out of?  I'd bet 90 percent would say yes.  I challenge you to define how?  Do you have a retention program?  Can you answer:

• How you ensure that your customer is 110 percent completely happy?

• How do you prevent your customer from going to market to price shop?

• How do you measure customer satisfaction?

• How are you proactively helping your customers?

What I am talking about here is "intentional retention".  You aren't leaving it up to any scapegoats in sales or marketing if you lose a customer or even a major account.  You have the support and a standalone program in place that outlines and defines how you keep those customers.  Savvy retailers, airlines and the like have loyalty and/or reward programs to assist with repeat customers.  However, in business, you don't have the luxury of having the numbers to have a sophisticated program that is intricate within your systems, web, marketing and sales systems.  Don't make any excuses:  you don't have time, you aren't that big.  That isn't any excuse.  Your survival depends on it!

It is not the employer who pays the wages. Employers only handle the money. It is the customer who pays the wages.”

                                                                                             ~Henry Ford

What I am recommending you do is assemble all the chiefs in your major areas (accounting, operations, sales, marketing, technical, production, labor), bring out the drawing board, split into groups of three or four and ask everyone to answer the following questions:

• Identify who your best customers are:  create a profile

• Who pays well? 

• Who is not always asking for discounts? 

• Who are you best able to provide service for?

• What are the frequencies:  daily, weekly, monthly, annually?

• Do you have measures to identify churn risk (will leave you for the competition)

• What do you do if a customer is identified as a potential loss?

• How do you communicate with your customer?

• How would your customer identify in its importance to your organization?

• Who is involved when a risk is identified?  What is done?  Is there a process?

Define a clear objective

Bring forward each team's contribution then extrapolate what everyone agrees upon.  Of course, there may be some who are inclined to defend their stance.  Regardless, the discussion that will evolve should be eye opening, the heated debates unsettling.  While it may take a few sessions, you must create a clear objective consistently held out front:

1. The goal is to understand everyone's perspective (it's going to be a mish mash to start with) 

1. What is your retention strategy?

1. How are you going to provide a loyalty or retention program?

Let me tell you.  You can often capitalize on the big boys.  Granted, they have at their disposal lots of research, intelligence, structure, programs that you simply don't have because of your size.  What I'm proposing is you to decide how you can carve out that information into a niche that helps your company. 

Define your niche 

If so many big guns have loyalty or reward programs ask yourself what the purpose of it all is?  Then set out to define your own niche and create something that fits in with your size, capabilities and financial resources.  If you don't think this is important then I should have asked at the start:  what will it cost your organization to lose a customer ... if you don't have an intentional retention strategy?

 "The well-satisfied customer will bring the repeat sale that counts." 

~James Cash Penney (JC Penney) 

~CUSTOMER CARE ~

 "Let's take care and protect our customers -- or someone else will."