Customer Relationships

In order to combat this frustration and fear of product obsolescence, producers offer you over-the-air updates that upgrade your product’s software to perform new tasks and make your user experience, in general, more satisfying.

We are officially in ‘call after the holidays’ mode! I imagine a secret email or memo that goes out to all the prospects that you may call on and they don't tell you about this memo because it's top secret. It basically says:

“Hey, now until January 2nd, you can use ‘call me after the holidays’ as your blow-off to salespeople” I have a pretty good indication based on my spies that this secret memo does exist somewhere.

It’s that time of year. The holidays loom, there is a chill in the air, and countless articles appear providing guidance to sales representatives about how to close the year strong. The five, ten or twenty best strategies are outlined in checklists to insure end-of-year success. “Contact every client” is an action often recommended, as is “Revisit prospects who have chosen another vendor.”

We’ve all heard the sobering statistics that winning a new major account costs far more than keeping one – depending on the study you read, perhaps twenty times as much. And we’ve all heard how even a small increase in a firm’s overall major client retention rate has an exponentially positive effect on revenues and profits. We also know, of course, that, on the flip side, decreases in retention rates produce similarly negative impacts, often devastating and long-lasting.

We all know the statistics. Most selling organizations derive 80% of their revenues from 20% of their clients. Winning a new major account costs up to 20 times more than keeping a current one. And even a small percentage increase in a firm’s major client retention rate can have an exponentially positive effect on revenues – while similar decreases can produce negative financial impacts, often devastating and long-lasting.

Here are five simple ways we can improve the quality of our communication with the people who are currently buying from us and expand and deepen those relationships over time.

Read Time: 8 Minutes

At the time I purchased my car I knew who I wanted to buy it from because I liked the salesperson. He transformed what is usually a miserable experience for many into one that made me feel confident about the whole experience. In short, I felt like I was dealing with a good friend. I don’t know how he pulled that off because I generally don’t like to be chummy with sales people when I buy things.

Clients’ willingness to provide salespeople with referrals is primarily a matter of trust. And, salespeople can earn that trust not only by providing products and services that ultimately deliver exceptional results, but also by “delivering” exceptional experiences.

Did you ever have a conversation with a prospect who suddenly, and for no apparent reason, became unreceptive to perfectly good advice?

Will you be replaced…by a smartphone app? It’s almost impossible to make it through the day without seeing or hearing an advertisement with the tag line, “We’ve got an app for that.” Interestingly, it wasn’t that long ago that the word “smartphone” didn’t exist. And, if you checked the dictionary, “app” was an abbreviation for apparatus, appendix, or applied.