Tips for Retaining Customers and Building a Sustainable Business

 

What is your driving force for business?

According to best selling author on sales and business, Brian Tracy, the purpose of business is to create and keep a customer in a cost-effective manner.

Building a successful long term enterprise entails sustaining sales from a wide range of returning clients who are confident in your product or service such that they move from just being customers to becoming partners who refer other people to patronize you.

Profits are not the purpose of a business, profits are a result of creating and keeping a sufficient number of customers who yield a sufficient profit after all costs. This is why the key measure of business success is customer satisfaction.

Every effort and activity of your business must be aimed at satisfying customers in a manner that is better than any other competitor. This is how client relationships are built and brand loyalty is formed.

Why build a relationship?

An average human is a relational being. We thrive on mutual connections and go to places where these connections are stronger, and this also affects our buying behavior.

It is to your benefit to build a relationship with your client rather than focus on making one-time sales, because building relationships will guarantee you repeated patronage and referrals (this happens only when a customer is happy and satisfied).

A few tip to build sustainable relationships with your customers:

• Focus on providing value:

If you are interested in doing business for the long term, you should focus on providing value consistently.

This has everything to do with the quality of your products and services, improving the ways customers experience your brand, and how your clients and even potential clients perceive you as a brand.

• Keep Records

Proper record-keeping is the life-wire of businesses. Businesses thrive on accurate data and the ability to analyze such data to make useful inferences.

You cannot measure growth when you do not have sufficient data to do so. How many clients did you attract and keep in the last two months? How many first time purchases were made? Should our ads be targeted at awareness or on mind recall? All of these questions can be answered accurately by good record keeping.

You can only measure your growth when you keep records.

• After Sales Support

Do a lot of follow-ups with your customers to find out how they feel about your product or service. This is important because it shows you are not just interested in closing a sale but in satisfying your customer’s needs. Show concern, ask for feedback, and implement the feedback you have received to serve them better.

• Stay Consistent

Business has life-cycles just like every other system that works. Commit to staying consistent and persistent and this will pay off in the long run.

Building a sustainable business is not rocket science, it is in the application of actionable principles that guarantee long-term success.

As you build, remember that profits are not your only aim but the ultimate goal is to satisfy customers in a cost effective manner.