How to Maintain a Loyal Customer Base

"Customers aren’t loyal any more. They go for low prices and nothing else." This is what I hear over and over again - at seminars, on the telephone and in e-mails. Well, in some cases that may be true. But consumers won’t AUTOMATICALLY become loyal customers they have to have a good reason to be loyal. They need to be motivated.

KEEPING CUSTOMERS
How do you hold on to customers? And how can you turn an occasional customer into a consistently LOYAL customer who prefers to buy from you instead of anyone else?
Creating and nurturing a good relationship with your customers is the foundation of building and maintaining a loyal customer base. This is crucial to customer retention. Customers who never hear from you usually don’t feel a desire or a need to order from you unless they have no other source for your products.

(It goes without saying that good service and quality products are necessary to keep customers coming back.)

YOUR COMPETITION
With so many competitors out there trying to win your customers’ business, it’s a real challenge keeping your customer base intact. Competitors are contacting YOUR customers, offering all sorts of inducements to switch and buy from them. Consumers see your competitors’ commercials on television, hear them on the radio and read their ads in newspapers and magazines.

STAY IN TOUCH
Keeping in touch with customers used to mean going to visit them, calling them on the telephone and/or using direct mail. Then came the fax. But now we have e-mail.

Maybe you’ve seen the Staples commercials. A man sitting at his computer, saying: "When you’re as busy as I am, you tend to forget things. That’s why I like Staples dot com. They send me e-mails reminding me to stock up on supplies I need."

What a terrific and EASY way to keep in touch with customers and let them know when it’s time to order more products from you! In addition to telephone marketing, which should be used on a continuing basis, e-mail is another direct way to reach out, one-on-one, to your customers.

How do you get customers’ e-mail addresses? ASK them!

Make it a point, during every telephone call, to ask each customer for their e-mail address and (after asking their permission to send e-mails) let them know you will e-mail on a regular basis. But be sure you have a system in place to remind yourself to do this. You can use either a manual tickler system or a contact management system on your computer that will remind you.

SEND POST CARDS
Another way to stay in touch with customers is to do what many accountants and dentists do. Send printed postcards to customers with "It’s that time again" printed on the card, along with "It’s time to re-order your _______________" This takes only a few minutes to do, and your customers will appreciate the reminder.

About the Author

Reprint with permission
(Copyright, 2000, Ann Barrs Selling Supplies.com) Reprint permission granted in part or whole when the following credit appears "Reprinted with permission from Ann Barrs Selling Supplies.com Weekly E-Mail Sales Tips. To subscribe free, E-mail to: annbarr@sellingsupplies.com with "subscribe" in the subject line."


annbarr@sellingsupplies.com
www.sellingsupplies.com