How to Win Back Lost Customers

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How to Win Back Lost Customers

Losing a customer is never a good a thing. Customer churn impacts a business in countless ways. When a business experiences customer churn revenue and profitability are reduced while marketing, lead generation and reacquisition costs increase.

In spite of this, statistics show that almost 70 percent of businesses have no strategy to win back customers who have walked away. This is especially surprising since every business will lose a customer at some point.

While it is easy to blame the customer for having unreasonable demands or expectations, the truth is, an unsatisfied customer is a great way to find out what you could be doing better. And when you discover areas to improve, you might be able to win customers back.

The most important step you can take after a customer leaves is to figure out why. People don’t want to switch companies or find another drycleaner, for example. So what happened that made them want to leave? Were your prices too high? Are your competitors offering better service? It is imperative that you get the answers to these questions to prevent more customers from walking away. If appropriate, you could even ask for an exit interview. When talking to a customer who is leaving, be sure and take responsibility and apologize if there were failures on your part.

Another approach (which if often overlooked) is to ask that customer what you could have done to keep his or her business. The answer to this question could provide priceless information on not only winning that customer back but on keeping others, as well.

Keep in mind that some customers simply aren’t a good fit. Maybe they aren’t willing to pay a fair price for your products or services. Or maybe they want something you simply cannot provide. In such cases, it is best to wish them well and walk away.

Many businesses wait a long period of time before they approach a client who has left. This is a mistake. Check in with the former client on a regular basis beginning soon after their departure. A quick note or phone call will make a big impression and might even lead a disgruntled customer back to your door eventually.

Finally, it is important to remember that some customers who leave aren’t disgruntled at all. They may have left for reasons that have nothing to do with you. In such cases, it pays to offer these customers an incentive to come back. Be careful, however, that the incentive you are offering is worth their while. Nothing will turn off a customer faster than a worthless offer.

When a customer walks away from you, it is tempting to write him or her off and never look back. With a little effort, however, you may be able to lure that customer back and find your relationship stronger than ever.

Seven Ways to Target and Connect with Prospects

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Seven Ways to Target and Connect with Prospects

Targeting and connecting with prospects is crucial to any effective lead generation strategy. Implementing such a strategy involves a great deal of time and money and the success of the strategy can literally make or break a business.

If you are in the market for some new customers, it is essential that you don’t waste your resources on a strategy that is unlikely to reap any rewards. If you want to be as successful as possible in attracting new customers, here are some ways to help make that happen:

  1. Get to know your target audience. Surveys are a great way to get to know potential customers and also allow you to present your brand in the best possible light. Surveys also allow you to find out where prospects hang out online and how they prefer to be contacted.
  2. Pinpoint your competitors customers. Why reinvent the wheel if you don’t need to? Finding out who your competitors are trying to attract-and how they are doing it-can help you figure what you might be overlooking.
  3. Up your social game. The best thing about social media is that a little effort goes a long way. Instead of just promoting your brand on social media, use Facebook and Twitter, for example, to leave a solid impression on potential customers. When you put personality into your social media posts people will feel like they know you—and over time they will come to trust you, as well.
  4. Be responsive. Always answer calls, respond to emails and engage on social media. You never know when the person contacting you is your next big client. You also want to gain a reputation as a company who cares and really listens.
  5. Get reviewed. More and more people won’t even consider making a purchase unless they have read what others have to say about a product. That is why it is so important that you publish customer reviews and testimonials on your website. You also can send samples of your products to trade publications for their review
  6. Remember that content is king. It sounds cliché but content is still king. The more you publish original and compelling content the more potential customers will come to know your name and trust what you have to say. If you don’t have the resources to write your own content, hire someone to write it for you.
  7. Publish a newsletter. Personalized email newsletters are a cost-efficient way to get in front of customers and prospects. Again, if you don’t have time to author such a newsletter hire someone to do it for you.

Getting in front of new customers isn’t an easy job. It takes time and money. However, if you don’t get the job done right, chances are you won’t land any new customers, either.

The Importance of an Effective Business Development Strategy

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Many small-and medium-sized businesses fail to implement a business development strategy. Often this is because they believe their strong base of loyal customers is all they need to ensure future success.

However, as almost every business learns, no matter how many customers you have today, it always pays to be looking for new ways to attract additional clients. If you are looking to implement a business development strategy for your business, the first thing you need to realize is that business development is not the same as sales. Business development extends across a variety of departments and allows these departments to work together for the good of the business. In other words, business development makes a business better. While this can include (and often does) increasing sales, it is much, much more.

Business development is the process of identifying and executing new areas of business. The goal of business development then is not just increasing sales but uncovering new markets, new channels of distribution and, in some cases, new products to bring to market. Here are some of the other tasks typically undertaken as part of a strong business development strategy:

  • Understanding your company’s current position and determining where your business is headed. This involves things like conducting market research and a competitive analysis as well as assessing relationships with current clients and reaching out to new clients through networking events, seminars and trade shows.
  • Enhancing your company’s image. How your business or brand is seen by different audiences is critical to its success. Your website and marketing materials-brochures, catalogs, press releases-must all reflect your brand image and place your business in the most flattering light possible. Your image also must properly represent who you are and what you do.
  • Increasing market exposure. It is imperative that have a strong online presence that is helping to grow your business and build (or maintain) its reputation as an industry leader. This involves monitoring all online activities and developing an active presence across a variety of social media platforms. It also involves employing the most effective SEO techniques to increase your online visibility.

Business development can be difficult to define and a challenge to implement. However, it is imperative that you put a strong emphasis on business development activities. Failing to do so will mean maintaining the long term value of your business or brand will be especially difficult.

The Importance of an Established Lead Scoring Strategy

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The Importance of an Established Lead Scoring Strategy

Considering how important lead generation is in the world of B2B marketing, it is surprising that almost 80 percent of B2B marketers say they have not established a solid lead scoring strategy. Lead scoring helps a business prioritize leads according to engagement and without a strategy, leads and sales can be lost.

Lead scoring also provides real-time feedback that tells you how responsive your leads are to your marketing efforts and can indicate which leads are ready to buy. By identifying your hottest leads, you can reach out to these leads knowing that they have already expressed an interest in what you are selling.

Before you can reap the benefits of lead scoring, however, you must have a lead scoring system in place. What follows are the most basic steps involved in any lead scoring strategy:

  1. Decide what constitutes the ideal lead. What information are you looking for when it comes to leads? For example, do you want to know where they work? What they do for a living? How old they are? Their income level?
  2. Focus on your target audience. What are the common characteristics that those in your target share? This information allows you to identify who your typical customer is and what he or she needs from you.
  3. Assign values to particular characteristics. Assign a point score based on what characteristics are most important in terms of identifying your typical customer. After you have identified point values you can development an even more in-depth system that will allow you to qualify leads even further and help you to determine how qualified a lead is.
  4. Determine where a lead is in the sales funnel. Keep an eye on the buyer’s journey so you approach a lead at the correct time. Contacting a lead too early or too late can result in a lost sale.
  5. Refine, refine, refine. Lead scoring is not an exact science. It will be necessary to make changes as you perfect your lead scoring strategy. It is important to fine tune your lead scoring models so that you get the most accurate results.

Lead scoring is essential to your business’ bottom line because your sales team won’t waste valuable time and energy on leads that aren’t likely to convert. It also allows a business to focus on those leads who are most likely to convert. Finally, when done correctly, it will minimize the length of the sales cycle, improve conversion rates, and in many cases, increase the average size of the sale.