It\u2019s pretty well established that customers care about value. If you provide it, they buy from you. It\u2019s as simple as that. But I wonder, are you getting all the value you could be from your customer relationships? Are your customers doing as much for you as you are for them? Your business will be more successful if \u201cvalue\u201d is a two-way street. I believe that each one of your customers provides you with three distinct levels of value.<\/p>\n
First is the value of what they\u2019re buying from you now. Second is the value of what they could be buying from you. Third is the value of influence; the ways in which current customers can help you develop new customers.<\/p>\n
So, are you getting anything close to maximum value from your customers?<\/p>\n
The first level of value is all about what they\u2019re buying from you now. What\u2019s important about this level is that you protect it. In other words, that you don\u2019t lose customers. Here\u2019s an obvious statement: Happy customers don\u2019t get lost!<\/p>\n
Now an obvious question: Do you have happy customers? Here is a series of exercises to answer that question. First, sit down with a list of your customers. If you have lots of them, you might start with the 25 you consider to be most important. Next, give each of them a \u201ctemperature\u201d rating, using 98.6 degrees as the temperature of a healthy relationship, as it\u2019s the temperature of a healthy human body. A rating of 90 degrees might indicate a relationship that\u2019s mildly stressed; not really threatened, but not quite as strong as you\u2019d like it to be. A temperature of 80 degrees would indicate more serious stress, and so on. After your own rating, I\u2019d encourage you to ask others in your organization, perhaps your crew chief or accounting supervisor, for their perspective.<\/p>\n
Next, make the first of a series of \u201cinterval\u201d calls on those customers. This call has two purposes. First, confirm your temperature rating. Second, establish the appropriate interval for future calls. It needs to be long enough that you won\u2019t be smothering them, but short enough to avoid a problem that you don\u2019t find out about until it\u2019s too late to save the relationship.<\/p>\n
Back to confirming the temperature. I hereby give you permission to blame me for this call. Here\u2019s what you might say to your customer: \u201cI recently read an article by a consultant who works in our industry. He was writing about tracking the temperature of customer relationships.\u201d Provide the scale, and say, \u201cI have an idea where we are, but I don\u2019t want to presume anything. I wanted to ask you today, what do you think the temperature of our relationship is?\u201d That question hopefully leads to a frank discussion, and from there, you can talk about the frequency of future \u201cHow are we doing?\u201d calls.<\/p>\n
The second level of value is all about what they could be buying from you beyond what they\u2019re already buying from you. That raises the question of how you describe what you sell. I suspect that the words complete and comprehensive are part of your description. But this question may be not so obvious: What does complete lawn care or comprehensive irrigation services actually mean? I know that, as an industry professional, you know. The real question is whether your customer understands it as well. Which of these statements has the better chance of connecting and educating? \u201cWe\u2019re a comprehensive lawn care company,\u201d or, \u201cWe do A, B, C and D.\u201d<\/p>\n
What\u2019s important about the second level of value is to maximize it, and education is the key to that process. No one will ever buy a thing from you if they don\u2019t know that you sell it. But let\u2019s also consider this: The worst way to sell is to make a canned presentation. The best way to sell is to ask questions, establish interest and then take the next step if there is any. No customer will ever buy anything from you if they don\u2019t want or need it.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s the conversation I envision between you and your customer: \u201cYou\u2019ve bought quite a bit of A from us over the years and a little bit of B. But we also do C. So I wanted to ask you today, do you have any want or need for C?\u201d If they do, you have something to talk about and the real possibility of increasing your sales to that customer.<\/p>\n
By the way, this could be something very good to talk about on one of those \u201cinterval\u201d calls I suggested earlier.<\/p>\n
The third level of value is all about influence, the ways in which current customers can help you develop new customers. Here we\u2019re taking about two things: referrals and testimonials.<\/p>\n
In order to fully appreciate this opportunity, let\u2019s understand that there are referrals and then there\u2019s something called word-of-mouth. That term is often used to describe the phenomenon by which one of your customers says something nice about you to a friend or colleague or family member and that person in turn initiates contact. Word-of-mouth is really more of a testimonial than a referral, but more importantly, it\u2019s mostly a passive strategy. By that I mean you\u2019re probably appreciative when word-ofmouth brings you a new customer, but you don\u2019t do enough to encourage it.<\/p>\n
Encouraging it is simple. Just add an element to your temperature tracking. When you confirm that the temperature is high, go the extra step and ask your customer to tell someone else about the experience of doing business with you. It\u2019s been proven that it might happen if you say nothing. Doesn\u2019t it make sense that it might happen more often if you encourage it?<\/p>\n
Alternately, you might ask a happy customer for a testimonial that you could put on your website or your Facebook page. If we\u2019ve learned anything from the modern marketplace, it\u2019s that testimonials and customer reviews have real value.<\/p>\n
Let me end this with one more question. What percentage of maximum value do you think you\u2019re getting from your customer base right now? If your answer is 90% or higher, you still have some opportunity here, but I\u2019d say you\u2019re doing a really good job of getting value from your customers. If your answer is 70% or below, you have a lot of opportunity, and depending on how well you\u2019re protecting the first level of value, you may have a lot at risk.<\/p>\n
From what I\u2019ve seen, the majority of businesses are in the second category. Hopefully what you\u2019ve just read will get you started on doing something about that.<\/p>\n
Get more value from your customers by keeping connected.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":1606,"parent":0,"template":"","columns-categories":[46],"main-categories":[50],"class_list":["post-1604","columns","type-columns","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","columns-categories-business-to-business","main-categories-business-development"],"yoast_head":"\n