Examining Key Business Goals

This month we are taking a look at business culture as a means to produce a return on investment (ROI). A company’s culture is imperative to the health and wellness of an organization, and its implications are felt internally and externally. Culture can help make your business healthy or even unhealthy, and we believe is measurable within any organization.

A company’s culture affects performance metrics like employee engagement, retention, cost savings, process improvements, error rates and customer satisfaction. When a company’s culture is healthy, these metrics are thriving. But when elements of culture are not aligned with the business vision or mission, you can witness a decline in these metrics.

Your company’s culture impacts your goals and strategies in both the long and short term. Regardless of what industry your business is in, your goals will involve profitability, growth, and customer satisfaction. But it is becoming increasingly important to discuss three main areas of customer satisfaction as critical to a company’s goals of profitability and growth. These are acquisition, retention, and re-acquisition of clients.

Acquisition of new customers or clients

Acquiring new customers allows your business to grow and expand. At the same time, it is also crucial for maintaining profitability in the long term as existing customers may choose to leave or move to a competing company. As a business grows, matures, and changes, it will always need a new market to target.

Acquiring new customers requires research and a defined approach. Begin by understanding the following:

• Who are you are choosing to gain as your new customers?
• Why have they never bought from you before?
• Why are they buying from another company, or why are they unaware of your product or solution?
• Who is working with your competitors, or receiving a similar service from another provider?
• What are your current customers looking for, and how can you provide them with new or other products or services that exceed their expectations?

It can be daunting to attract new customers, as you have to build the relationship from scratch. The requirement to build trust that enables you to get someone’s contact details, to have them agree perhaps to a contract, engage in paying you for services, and stick around after a trial period ends.

We suggest you get to know your target market through surveys and feedback, so you have all the information you need before launching a new product or policy.

Retaining existing customers

Customer retention deals with the actions a company takes to reduce customers switching to another provider or supplier. It is a common view that the cost of acquiring a new customer is higher than the cost of retaining an existing one — this is one of the reasons it is important not to neglect relationships with existing customers.

The ultimate goal of customer retention strategies is to foster loyalty and appreciation in existing customers, which help a company not only to retain as many customers as possible, but also to attract new ones through marketing and current customer evangelists.

Retaining existing customers comes down to keeping them happy, and delighting them with your product or service. In building your plan for customer retention, consider the following:

• Because it costs less to retain an existing customer than to acquire a new one, you will be gaining significant cost savings. Additionally, it is easier to nurture an existing relationship than build a new one from zero.
• Offering your customers additional or complementary products and services is a great way to keep them interested. You can invite them to attend special events and programs, and perhaps build customer loyalty programs, offer discounts or special holiday sales pricing.
• Delivering value through regular communication is key to maintaining successful customer relationships. This can take the form of whatever is most effective for your brand, whether it’s by mail, with content, on a blog, through video, etc.
• Always add value for your customers. Give more than they expect, whether it’s in the form of a gift, excellent customer service, or anything in between.
• Find a sweet spot that works for your customers or clients. Don’t over or under do it by sending constant promotional emails that lead to unsubscribing, and don’t send so few that they forget about you.
• Once you have an idea of what works for your business, be predictable and timely by sending regular non-promotional communications to strengthen the relationship.

By setting relationship building as an important part of your company’s culture, businesses thrive. As an example, here at Marcus Coaching, we foster relationships by keeping in constant touch with our current clients. Additionally, we provide new focused business coaching content every week to add value to past, current, and potential clients.

However, beyond that, we work with and offer services of Palm Beach Content Company to our clients, so they can build up their content professionally and add value to their own customer’s needs. If you’re curious about creating a content strategy for your business, feel free to reach out to Peter Marcus, or contact vanessa@palmbeachcontentco.com.

Re-acquiring former customers

Every business will lose customers from time to time, regardless of industry and quality of customer relations and service. Customers change focus, lose interest or seek attention elsewhere, and as a business owner, partner or executive it is your job to get them back.

As a business owner, it is a valuable tactic to re-acquire former customers. They are less expensive to acquire because you already have their contact information, and with that, an existing or historical relationship to work with.

It is important to think of former customers as opportunities, rather than write them off as a loss. They require less time and effort to engage with because they have already experienced you, your product or your services, and the initial learning curve of acquisition is diminished. If a client reaches the end of her contract, your ongoing contact and personally reaching out to renew can be enough to re-acquire her.

Keeping an up-to-date active database of all customers will help your team assess which former customers might still be interested in your products. At the end of the day,  customers come and go. The important thing is to know if they are leaving for a negative reason. In cases where a negative experience has led a customer or client to leave, ask if they may choose to consider restarting the business relationship, and if so, how you can provide a better service in the future. This can help your business save costs, and lead to gaining feedback on how to add value to your business.

Putting customers at the center of your business

Businesses need customers for survival, for growth, for profits, and for expansion. Here at Marcus Coaching we consider it vital for you as a business owner, to put your customers and your own internal and external teams first. They are the lifeblood of your company, regardless of what industry you are in.

No business can survive and thrive without support and feedback from its customers. Without customers, you don’t have a business. Active resources can be utilized to research and understand your customers, and with support from BusinessLife coaching to provide clarity and a sense of direction for your business.

It is your role to determine the importance of a customer focus in your business. That may lead to determining the right balance of acquisition, retention, and re-acquisition of customers for your business. From there, ensure you are adding value and delighting them. In this way, you will build a base of loyal and happy customers and together you will drive your business to grow, be healthy and bring prosperity.