Small businesses believe that a terrific product or service that provides a great customer experience will cause them to naturally gain and keep customers. The truth is that most businesses work on gaining clients and customers, but they don’t work as hard on retaining existing ones. Effort should be placed on both.
Gain New Clients
Host an Event
One of the best ways to gain a new client is with power entertaining. When you give them great food, terrific company and outstanding ambience, you’re giving them memories that will cause them to remember you in the future. This will make them want to do business with you.
To truly shine with an event, you should look for a venue that’s designed specifically for these kind of events, and offers professional service. Trying to go cheap and taking your most valuable clients to a pub where you have to bring beers by yourself won’t do you much favors. Along with an intimate setting where you can make your clients feel special, the event should be a way to expose your guests to unique experiences like new food or wine.
Golf Weekends
When you are inviting a potential new client for an outing, you should be clued in to their life. You can do this by browsing their social media feed. With public figures, you might be able to find biographies that can tell you a bit about their hobbies too.
A client who loves golf would enjoy a golf weekend. Make sure the outing is within your company’s budget even if you don’t get this new client. You’ll need to plan the destination as well as the travel for the client to arrive.
Sea Fishing
This is a great way to bond with your client on the open sea. You’ll catch some fish and a few laughs. Like the other outings, you have to make sure your client will love this kind of adventure. This means getting to know your potential client before broaching the subject of sea fishing.
You can charter a boat for a few hours or an entire day. That will depend on your budget as well as how long you and the client can be away from work. The boat will have equipment that you can rent too. Make sure that’s factored into your budget.
Keep Your Old Clients
A Simple Thanks
Once you have a client, it’s easy to forget to be thankful. You’re working hard on gaining new clients that the others might be ignored. An occasional simple, yet heartfelt thanks can go a long way towards keeping a client.
While it can be a card that’s automatically sent like those birthday cards you receive from your insurance company, they should be a bit more authentic than that. Take the time to thank your clients with a handwritten note on the anniversary of their retention. That shows real appreciation.
Relevant Promotions
If you have a new service for your clients, offer it at a discount for your existing accounts. It’ll be easier to sell to existing clients since they already like your company enough to purchase or contract services.
Think about what your clients need and help provide that complementary service or product. For example, companies that sell printers also sell ink cartridges. If a company didn’t offer the cartridges as well, they’d be losing out on complementary revenue and sales.
Incentives for Referrals
If you implement a program that provides incentives for your current clients to recommend and refer new ones, you’re going to cultivate an ongoing relationship with current accounts while gaining new clients.
When you offer deep discounts and bonuses to clients who are referring you business, that client will do most of the selling for you. They’ll be your testimonial as well as your very own sales team, which means they’ll be doing much of the work for you when it comes to bringing in new clients or customers.
When trying to gain new clients, you need to impress them with a sensational experience. Make sure it’s something memorable so when you approach them about doing business with you, they’ll remember the effort you put in to gain their trust. Don’t forget to focus on existing clients too. It takes much less effort to retain a happy client.
