Be Different or be dead

April 16, 2012

3 simple ways to protect your most valued customers

Source: Pexels

Who’s on your endangered list?

Your top ten (or 20 or 30…) revenue producers. The folks that give you a disproportionate amount of your cash flow. The people who have been loyal to you for years.

They give a damn about you and what you do.

The people who, if you lose, will cause major harm to your business. The people who, when they leave, will spread a negative word about you to their friends and associates.

What are you doing to protect them from competitive assault and to immunize them from catching someone else’s ‘value virus’?

Here are 3 things that have worked for me.

1. Engage with them regularity

Call them personally. Never delegate this to others. They are extremely important to your well-being so what is more important than giving them your personal attention? Nothing!
Book it on your calendar. Make it matter. Put it ahead of everything else. Never postpone or cancel.

2. Offer any special promotion the them first

Never try to entice someone to leave their current supplier and come over to you with a promotional deal without providing a better deal to your loyalists first.
It’s an insult to your fans to offer a special deal to a non-customer while ignoring those who made you successful.

3. Establish a dedicated customer service line for this group

Special customers deserve special treatment everyday. Your “endangered species team” should be all-ways on for them 24X7 If they have literally ANY issue, your team will be there to take care of them.

Make a big deal of this. Communicate “the team” internally and explain why you are doing it. Have a personal face-to-face meeting with each endangered customer and tell them what you are doing and why. This is your opportunity to reiterate how important they are and how much they mean to your organization.

3 things that will prevent your most critical loyal customers from entering the zone of extinction.

Have a go.

You have everything to lose if you don’t.

Cheers,
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead Book Series

• Posted 4.16.12 at 10:06 am by Roy Osing
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