Your customer retention strategies are similar to how you pick a fantasy football team. Seriously. Here are a few tips to help you score lifelong customers.
It's almost fall, which means football is back. With football, it seems like the rules are always changing. The field is getting bigger. The playbook has new pages. For some athletes and fans, it is hard to keep up. As fantasy football talk fills the air, it got me thinking how committed you have to be to win.
If you go into a fantasy football draft without keeping up on the players’ health and stats, your likelihood of winning is… slim. The draft happens quickly, and your top picks may be gone before your turn comes. If you only learned information about your favorite players, you will be clueless about who else to pick when they are gone.
It is the same strategy with finding and keeping your customers. You need to do your research. You need to know as much as you can about the customers you speak with (existing and potential) to know how to retain and win them over.
According to Marketing Metrics, it is approximately 50% easier to sell to existing customers than it is to new ones; however, most startup companies focus on gaining new clients instead of retaining the old ones. But check this out: increasing your customer retention by 5% will increase your profits by a whopping 75%, according to Bain and Co.
So whether you are getting ready to do a fantasy football draft or launch new customer retention strategies, here are three key aspects to winning over your customers (and one customer retention tool that will allow you to keep every customer for life):
1. Knowing Your Position
In fantasy football drafts, knowing player positions can make or break your season. You have to know which positions the players are in, making sure you don’t draft too many running backs or quarterbacks. Balance is key.
Think of your customers like players. Just as football players play lots of different positions and have different athletic abilities your customers also all have different personalities. They like different things, react in certain ways, and have various business and personal goals. You have to know just what to say and when to say it at the right time. One wrong “play” and you may have positioned your company the wrong way.
2. Establishing Value
To win over your customers, your company/product needs to have value. If an item or product is high in value they are more likely to try it out with little research. For example, Peyton Manning is touted as one of the best quarterbacks in the NFL. His name is known even by those who don’t watch football, which clearly indicates his value. Many people would pay top dollar to have him on their fantasy football league.
Even though Manning turns thirty-eight this year (which means that in football years he’s ready for the retirement home), his value is still sky high. The overall value he brings to the table, cancels out any other downsides. Manning worked for that value standard just as your company has to work to gain value with its customers.
3. Ensuring Quality
When two football players have equal value, then you examine who has more quality to decide which one is worth picking. For example, C.J. Spiller, running back for the Buffalo Bills, and Ryan Mathews, running back for the San Diego Chargers, both have the same value in fantasy drafts.
But if you examine player quality, Spiller is the better pick. Spiller’s ability to catch the ball away from the crowd of people on the offensive line combined with his speed gives him the higher quality many fantasy football players prefer over Mathews.
This same strategy applies to customer retention: make sure that your company/product is always more quality than the competition. And quality is not just defined by how well your product/service works; it also extends to the kind of customer service you have, the information you provide, how quickly you troubleshoot problems, etc.
Be known for providing a quality product with quality service, and before you know it you will have the value of Manning and the quality of Spiller. Your company will go from the bench to the A-team.
Want more tips on improving relationships with your customers? Take a look at our free checklist.
Today's blog post co-written by Karen Bell, Ving Success Representative
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