You will miss them when they're gone

Often you don’t appreciate what you have until it's gone.

This became apparent when Michael Jackson recently died.  All of a sudden his music was playing around the clock on TV and radio and everyone was lamenting the loss of a fantastic artist and musician (though he certainly had other questionable character traits!)

It is the same with your customers and clients.  Once you have a good customer you need to appreciate them, treat them like gold and make sure they keep coming back.  

Stop exerting so much energy on trying to find new clients and start concentrating on keeping the old ones.  This is particularly relevant to the product service and hospitality industries. 

Make it a rule that no-one leaves your business unhappy. They won’t come back and won’t forgive you for giving them a bad experience.  They will also go off and tell 10 other people how awful you are! 

If you do have a difficult customer go easy on them and try to understand their situation. They might have had a tough day or received bad service previously.  Listen to them, let them rant and then try to help them feel better with a good deal or even just an apology.  Often people just need to get something off their chest in order to feel better.

Make sure every one of your clients feel special when they interact with your business.  Customers you have a good rapport with and keep satisfied will refer you to others.  As we all know, word of mouth is the best and cheapest form of promotion.

Remember:

• 80% of sales comes from 20% of your customers
• It costs one-third more to sell an item to a new customer than to sell it to an existing one
• Repeat customers spend one-third more than new customers per year
• It’s five times more profitable to sell to an existing customer than to a new one
• Repeat customers are more than twice as likely to refer  you to someone else.

Keep in contact with your current customers, update them on your offers and specials, thank them in some way for doing business with you, ask them to refer you to their friends.

Ways to keep in contact include:

• email newsletters
• Facebook fan page
• Twitter

And best of all, the old fashioned telephone!