Your Clients Leave Because They Think You Don’t Care
Here are
some widely quoted statistics from the U.S. News & World Report about why
clients leave:
- 1% Death
- 3% Move Away
- 5% Buy from a friend
- 9% Sold by a Competitor
- 14% Product Price
- 68% Perceived Indifference
To boil it
down...what it says is that if you are a business owner, more than two thirds
of the clients who stop doing business with you, do so because they believe
that you do not care that they’re your client.
So the question is, have you told your clients recently how much you
appreciate their business? Better yet,
have you shown them?
Telling
your clients once in a blue moon that you are happy to have them as a client
won’t cut it. Neither will a rare, grand
“client appreciation” event (for the most part). Just like any other relationship, your
clients will believe that you care about them and their business based on the “small
stuff.”
Personal
Information
Get to know
your customers on a personal level – information about their family, background
and interests. If you have difficulty
recalling such information, then that is where the beauty of CRM software comes
in – take good notes, enter the data in the CRM database and then review if
before you meet with the client. Even if
it is something you couldn’t have recalled on your own, the client never knew
and is likely impressed that you “remembered.”
The
personal information street also goes both ways, so don’t be afraid to share
information about yourself with your clients.
The closer your personal relationship, the harder it is for the client
to leave you. Think about it...on
average 5% of clients leave to do business with a friend. If you’re a friend you almost eliminate the
possibility of a client leaving you for that reason.
Communications
Regular
communications with your clients is crucial and the communications should be a
mixture of business and personal. Communications
between companies and their clients often tend to be one-sided and nothing but
business – us, us, us, sale, buy more, us, etc.
Nothing in those types of communications makes the customer feel special
or appreciated. Therefore, make sure
your communications are crafted so that the relationship is a two-way
street. Request feedback, give special
offers/opportunities that are truly unique to select clientele, and recognition
of personal milestones (weddings, birth of children, special accomplishments,
etc.) are but a few ways to develop more interactive and personalized client
communications.
Indifference
is your enemy. Make sure your clients
know you care and they’ll likely stay clients for a long time to come.
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