Listen up - and make clients for life.
Recently, one of my clients told me that she’s working with me because she wants customers for life.
“I’m your customer for life, so I want to know how you do it, so I can do it, too.”
What’s interesting to me is that you don’t come across much talk of lifetime customers on the internet.
It’s so “in the moment.”
What’s that about?
It’s no secret in the business world that it’s much easier — and cheaper – to have a customer buy from you again and again, than it is to lower your prices to get a lot of people in the door who only buy from you once.
But online, there’s a culture of big launches and flash mobs of customers. If you are building a not-so-big business, where you listen to your clients and take exceptional care of them, deliver on your promises, and want to make plenty (but not necessarily a million dollars), it’s easy to get distracted by the neon lights of running a grow-fast-get-rich-quick internet business.
We’re just at the point where our programs flow from one to the next… so people WANT to stick around. It took me awhile to figure out what I like teaching. Maybe you’re in the process of figuring it out for yourself, too. That’s totally normal – although you don’t hear much about it. Again, there’s a prevailing idea that you knock it out of the park on your first go. Some people do, but what’s more interesting is sustainable success over the next 10 to 15 years (or more).
Here are some ideas for how to make customers for life…
1) Lowering your prices doesn’t always win you the best clients. Many business owners think that offering a deal is the way to get clients. While that strategy is good to get people in the door, it can also train them to ONLY move when something’s underpriced. As preacher TD Jakes says, “quality costs what it costs… it doesn’t go on sale.”
2) Focus on your client experience. Once you get the hang of delivering group programs, put your attention back on the process of onboarding clients. Even look at the words you use to talk to and welcome new clients – are you using a template that you got from a mentor, or have you made it your own?
3) Practice “client delight.” It’s the little things that go a long way. So what can you do to delight your clients? It’s easy to get bogged down in the day-to-day running of your programs… but it pays to pick your head up and ask yourself, “what can I do to knock their socks off this quarter? How can I add MORE value?”
4) Make sure your offers are so good, YOU’D buy them. Take the standard business model you’ve been taught, and make it your own. You’re the boss – and once you know the rules, you get to break them! When I finally admitted to myself that one of my group programs wasn’t that fun for me to teach awhile ago, I asked myself, “what would I LOVE to do with my people?” That’s how I came up with the Writing Brigade, a small group of business owners who gather on Fridays to workshop their message and write together.
Years ago, one of my friends gave me a bit of advice: business isn’t about never messing up. It’s about how you handle the mistakes you make.
We recently bought InfusionSoft this year, and have been learning how to make the most of it. Not just for marketing, but for listening to our clients so we can do an even better job of serving them. One of the things we’re implementing is asking everyone who does a production lab with us: “would you recommend us to your friends and colleagues?” It seems so simple, but I’m really excited to see the feedback.
For us, we’ve relied on word of mouth and referrals to build the business for years. But actually asking our clients how we’re doing – and having a system to follow up and right any wrongs – feels really, really good.
Mighty thanks to mario flickr photostream for the listening up.
