Talk to Your Customers - Or Someone Else Will! Three Ways to Stay in Touch With Your Customers

Talk to Your Customers - Or Someone Else Will! Three Ways to Stay in Touch With Your Customers

By Matt Cotner 

One of the greatest opportunities you have today to make sure that you manage through this current turmoil is to simply talk to your customers. However, it is amazing to see how few business owners and sales professionals talk to their customers on a regular basis even though companies have the best of intentions. Rarely do companies and their employees or even their owners take the time to do simple things to make sure they stay in contact with their customers.

Staying in contact with your customers is an easy way to make sure that you stay connected and you keep on your customer's top of mind. There are three simple ways that you can follow to make sure that when your competitor comes knocking on your customer's door; your customer will not answer.

Touch Based on Segmentation

Like anything else in this world, your time is limited. So, how do you maximize the time you have available during your business day to ensure that you are talking to your customers? It becomes important to make sure that you segment your customers in a manner such that you know who your most profitable and best customers are as well as your least profitable customers are. This allows you to then develop a plan for performing initial and continuous contact with your customers based on their customer segment.

Develop a Plan

Once you have segmented your customers, take the time to develop your plan for your customer segments. This plan does not have to be complicated and it does not have to be expensive. For example, you could identify your top 20 customers within your customer portfolio and establish a plan that you will physically contact those top 20 customers on a monthly or quarterly basis. This physical contact could be nothing more than a 30-second phone call, an e-mail, or a drop-in to their location. During the contact, you can simply find out the answers to what, when, where, why, and how. These are nothing more than the questions that your elementary school teacher told you to answer in any paper or essay you turned in to her years ago. Today is no different. In other words, you want to know what is going on in your customer's life at that particular time? You want to ask these questions so you can see if they have challenges, opportunities, or issues that you might be able to solve or help provide a solution or course of action. Also, do not forget that you can help them become more successful because you, inevitably, have a database of customers yourself as well as people in your network. Never be afraid to share that and help them become more successful.

Execute

The previous two paragraphs are all in vain if you do not follow this last paragraph specifically. At the end of the day, you have to execute on your plan. Most business owners and sales professionals, quite simply, lose it at this point in the process. They develop their elaborate plans for contacting customers, and then failed to execute. Your execution does not have to be anything more creating a very simple list of your top 20 customers followed by the date in which you contact them. You can track this manually or electronically. There are a number of computer software packages related customer management could help you do this seamlessly. The companies that execute will not only survive, but also thrive in this environment.

Will you be the one who continues to survive? You will be if you segment your customers, develop a plan, and execute the plan. Are you going to be one of the thrivers? Ultimately, that remains your choice. The time to start is now.

Following this simple three-step strategy will ensure that you stand a great chance at winning and besting your competitors. Best of Luck!

ABOUT THE COMPANY: Matt Cotner is President of Retain More Customers, Inc. Founded in 2008, Retain More Customers, Inc. is the leading customer retention management firm focused on customer retention for small and medium-sized businesses. Utilizing a proprietary five stage customer retention management system, Retain More Customers, Inc. provides it customers and prospective customers the opportunity to reduce customer retention by 5% or greater resulting in a 25 to 80% improvement in profits. The company focuses on providing small and medium-sized businesses with a turnkey solution for reducing customer attrition, adding value, and enhancing shareholder value. The five stage customer retention system is available through the company's website (www.retainmorecustomers.com) with immediate download capability or available in printed form. Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Matt_Cotner