Customers for life [Archives:2002/44/Business & Economy]
The Road Ahead
BY RAIDAN A. AL-SAQQAF
r_saqqaf@hotmail.com
It costs five times as much to get a new customer as it does to keep an existing one. On this premise, the concept of relationship marketing came into existence. It is all about building a relationship with your prospects and listening to their needs. Once you’ve built that relationship, shown your care, and earned their trust, you are on the road to making them customers for life.
The basis for establishing any relationship, whether it is personal or purely business, is dialogue. Relationships can’t exist without it. Depending on how good your dialogue is, and how well you create opportunities for meaningful contacts, your customers can be loyal, and your friends.
Relationship marketing, however, is more than just making friends. It’s about getting lifelong business. A good salesman should know how to approach a prospect and make him a customer for life. With a low-pressure, honest and will-always-be-there manner, the business can earn customer loyalty.
Another perk of establishing good relationships with customers is that they will refer their friends and associates to you. Referrals are like personal endorsements about the business and its services. By the time a referral calls you, he’s already partially sold to you, which makes the sale easier.
Consider a young man of some 20-years-old who opens his first bank account. As he is in the early stage of his career, he is likely to work for another 35 years, which is a lot of time. The important thing for the marketer to remember is the longer this man continues to use the same bank, the more profitable it is to have him as a customer. You never know what your customer could be tomorrow. Maybe he’ll become the manager of a large organization with resources, savings and influence. Who knows?
The important question to ask is, how do you get him to be your customer for years on end and not lose him before his prime earning and saving days? That is done through keeping and maintaining contact with your customers. If a customer is neglected, he might be forced to turn to your competitor who might have been contacting him to get the business. And if that happens you might lose a valuable customer.
A good customer relationship management system can help in retaining customers by looking after their different needs, and facilitating whatever is possible in order to ensure their satisfaction. It also helps to communicate complaints from the customers, and rectify any errors that might take place.
Endnote: Customers are too valuable. Businesses should establish good relationships with them and maintain contact and be always accessible to them, maybe with the help of a customer relationship management system. Otherwise you might lose them to competitors.
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