Marketing Your Business - Maximizing Your Marketing ProfitsWhere Have All Those Clients/Customers Gone?
By Andrew S. Linick, Ph.D., The Copyologist®
What turns clients and/or customers off?
How often have you said to yourself, "why has the number of repeat sales gone down for the sixth straight month? I wonder what's happened." The reason probably is the Smiths and the Browns and the Ragusas and the Jones have gone elsewhere for their needs. Andrew Linick, Ph..D., who conducts numerous seminars/workshops worldwide, has some sound ideas about why your quarry has flown the coop.
The tendency in selling most products, services as well as offering business opportunities is to place more emphasis on acquiring new clients/customers than on holding old ones. This is understandable, as there is no greater thrill for a businessperson or owner than to land a new account, especially if the struggle for new buyers has been long and difficult. Getting new business is one way to increase sales volume, but not the only way. Volume can also be increased by encouraging existing clients/customers to buy more. As you can see, there is no gain at all if the amount of new business is offset by the loss of the old. Your best sales strategy is the one that pays equal attention to both objectives-gaining new clients and holding onto old clients.
Certainly, you should want at least an annual inventory of your clients. For example, what percentage of sales last year went to newly acquired buyers and what percentage went to clients carried over from previous years? How many old clients stopped buying and Why? With today's technology, it is quite easy to monitor new sales as well as repeat business.
What can be done, if anything, to bring these lost sheep back to you?
Have the lost clients gone out of business or moved? Not usually.
Are they buying from another source? Obviously.
But what happened? Why do clients leave one company for another?
When you are reasonably sure of the answer to the last question-why clients run away-you are better qualified to, first, take steps to eliminate the faults which have caused dissatisfaction and second, decide intelligently how to go about reclaiming some of your lost business.
To find out why clients quit buying, we selected a cross section of a hundred inactive charge accounts of a large retail agency, whose clients hadn't done any business with it for at least a year.
We asked each to state frankly what had happened. Why were they no longer buying from that company. The answers were surprising…
Do clients leave a company because they are angry, they can get a better price elsewhere, or have been influenced by friends or relatives?
You might expect these to be the major reasons for lost business. However, none rated high on our survey lists. In fact, more than two-thirds of the inactive clients gave no special reason-the company had simply let them drift away.
Here are the figures:
€ Sixty-eight had no special reason.
€ Fourteen had grievances which had not been adjusted.
€ Nine were lured away by lower prices or better service.
€ Five had been influenced by friends to shop elsewhere.
€ Three had moved and were using a local company
in their area.
€ One had died.
To be sure, the figures just cited would vary for other groups of one hundred among the clients for other types of business. But it seems fair to assume that the indifferent attitude of companies is the leading reason in a great number of cases. People stop buying because they are allowed to stop. Perhaps the company forgets to show appreciation for the client's patronage or does little to retain that goodwill. Often the only check on accounts is for credit purposes; no one notices that certain accounts are going stale or follows up by asking clients why they stopped shopping.
This is not true of all companies. Some watch their clients as closely as a hen watches her chicks. But it is surely true of far too many operating today.
Of course the company with strong field representation, and counselors calling regularly on clients, has a better chance of hanging on to clients than the one that limits personal contact with representatives.
No company, however, can afford to overlook any means that might help to keep clients satisfied and assured of their importance to the company.
One good way is with a well-written me to you-ish, benefit-laden dynamic sales letter-one that doesn't easily wind up in the junk mail category.
NEXT: The anatomy of a successful sales letter that keeps on working.
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