Keeping the Client in Mind

What is the true goal of a company? Is it to obtain quick sales or achieve long lasting relationships with your clients? To answer this lets look at the facts first, according to Return on  Behavior magazine.

• You have a 60-70% chance to obtain a sale from a returning clients compared to a 5-20% chance from a new client.
• It costs 6 times more to gain a new client compared to retaining a returning one.
• Only 4% of dissatisfied clients will speak out.
• Price isn’t the main reason someone changes from a brand or product, it is typically because of bad client service.
• Increasing your retention rate by 2% is equivalent to decreasing your price by 10%

These are just a couple of the many facts about client habits and why it is extremely important to focus on retaining clients rather than obtaining new clients to your business.

A great example of doing this is explained in “From the Jewelry Counter to the Janitor’s Closet” by Leah Waldrop, where she explains a story of a man going to multiple different Jewelry stores to get a pair of earings for his female companion the only downside was he didn’t know anything about earings. During the story he had told every sales representative to see their earings and explained that he didn’t know anything about them. The representatives proceeded to show him the earings, but that was all before returning to their work. Finally one representative started asking questions about his companion to try and better help the man and after getting enough information to make a mental image of the companion. The lady then made a suggestion to the man and reassured him that his companion were going to love them. The man respecting her choice, because of the amount of time and depth of her care for his well being, the man proceeded to buy the earings, which his companion loved and wore almost every time he saw her.

This story shows a lot of different elements of selling a product, the first is you need to listen to your clients. If you look back into the story, you will notice only one representative listened and acted on what the client was saying, which was that he didn’t know much about earings. Even more importantly the last place he visited was the only place that asked him further questions, which means it was possible for any of these companies to get this sale, but only one acted on it. This isn’t limited to just Jewelry shops, but all forms of businesses. When you look at janitorial supply companies or custodial cleaning companies for instance your clients won’t usually know what they actually need for a job or how much product. This is why you need employees to be informed in how to answer these questions, and be willing to ask additional questions such as, what type of floor are you using this sealer on or what are you planning on cleaning, and not just point the client in the direction of those products and essentially say “good luck”.

If your employees go through these questions with the clients it will give them a better perspective of the products that will be right for the clients goal. Making their overall purchase a positive experience instead of a potentially negative one. This leads into the fact that a good sale leads to a much higher chance to getting that client to come back and purchase again.

Getting more sales is just the tip of the iceberg for why you should help clients when their in need of assistance of choosing a product. It has been found that if a client gets a problem resolved they will proceed to tell 4-6 people about the experience they had. This in turn creates word of mouth advertising, which is the best form advertisement for any company, due to people trusting their friends more than any other form of advertising. So remember to help your clients through their problems, because they will help your company survive.