A man who had lived an exemplary life died and was given a preview of heaven and hell. In heaven, people were peaceful and serene and smiling. In hell he was given a stretch limo, the best of food and drink, and an endless list of parties. He chose hell.
As soon as he walked through the gates, the devil began flogging him with a whip, and he was thrown into a fiery chasm.
“Wait!” he said. “Yesterday I was treated like a king, and now this. Why?”
“Ah,” said the devil. “Yesterday you were a prospect. Today you’re a customer.”
Unfortunately, the same thing happens in many organizations. They wine and dine you to entice you, only to lose track of you and seem disinterested after you make the decision to buy.
There’s one thing no business has enough of: customers. Take care of the customers you’ve got, and they’ll take care of you.
That’s why I preach, “The sale begins when the customer says yes.” Good salespeople make sure the job gets done on time – and done right. They must have a fanatical attention to detail.
Companies and sales reps that understand this mentality do extremely well. They’re at the head of the class. They understand the 80/20 rule – that 80 percent of their business comes from 20 percent of their customers. And trust me, it’s trending toward 90/10.
That’s why you have to cultivate the people who have done business with you in the past.
A large part of your sales strategy should be based on expanding your share of your existing customers’ business.
All great thoughts, but you are really looking for the how. Let me share some of the lessons I have learned about customer loyalty in my 40-plus years in business.
1. Pricing should not be the primary issue. A business built on price alone will only be a business as long as no other business offers a lower price. Price is important, but it’s just one feature of a sale. Don’t price yourself out of the market, but don’t price yourself out of business.
2. Quality is important, but alone it’s not enough. Sometimes, good enough is all the customer wants, not the top-of-the-line product you are hawking. You have to listen very carefully to your customers to determine what’s most important to them.
3. Service alone won’t guarantee a repeat customer. Great service is, in my estimation, probably more important than either price or quality. But without a combination of the three, your customers will be shopping around before your next courtesy call. Give them the total package.
4. How a customer complaint is handled is what truly determines your future relationship. You’ve aced the price, quality and service. But the day that something goes wrong is the real test. The shipping department put your order aside for an extra day, when it was promised yesterday. Oops, the customer got 1,000 widgets instead of 2,000. You quoted last month’s lower price, but accounting didn’t look at your note written in capital letters in glow-in-the-dark ink.
Then comes the phone call. Your response must be immediate and more than fair. When someone is counting on you, it’s often because someone is counting on them. So it’s not just you who looks bad. Fix it quick and fix it well. It may cost you big time, but it will pay off in the future.
No matter how many people there are in this world, there will always be a finite number of customers. I don’t care whether you are selling computers, cars, cell phones or even envelopes. There are just so many people you can sell to. Develop relationships with as many as you can realistically service.
Put yourself in the customer’s role: What if you had to go to a different grocery store every time you shopped? Would you save any time if you had to switch suppliers every time your company needed print cartridges? What if you had to take your precious little red Corvette to a new mechanic each time it needed a tune-up?
I once figured it cost my company around $5,000 to put a new customer on the books. I’m not willing to let that kind of investment go bad.
Mackay’s Moral: A wise old salesman once told me: “A cup of water can keep you going for a day. Find a well and you can go back to it year after year after year.”
Harvey Mackay is author of The New York Times best seller “Pushing the Envelope.” He can be reached through his Web site: www.mackay.com; or Mackay Envelope Corp., 2100 Elm St., Minneapolis, MN 55414.
