Do You Know Who Your Customers Are? Use Your List
You need to check your customer database.
What? You don’t have one? It isn’t up to date? It didn’t seem important to you?
Your customer database is worth its weight in gold. Without it, you might as well just plan on going out of not today, then soon.
Your existing customers are the most important source of income for any business. Knowing who these people are, understanding why they have chosen to work with you, and catering to their needs, wants, and desires must be your priority.
What amazes me is how many small business owners fail to exploit their very own customer list. You gained those customers at a relatively large cost. To retain them is critical because of the following reasons:
If a customer has bought from you once, chances are very excellent that they will do so again.
Recruiting a new customer costs much more than it costs to retain an old customer.
Catering to your existing customers is the wisest business decision you’ll ever make.
Selling to an existing customer is easier than selling to a new customer.
Selling to an existing customer is more profitable because you don’t have the cost of acquiring that customer this time.
The problem, however, is that once many businesses make a sale, they’re just looking over that customer’s shoulder to see who is next. Failing to try to make any type of follow-up sale to a customer who has recently done business with you can cost you thousands, if not tens of thousands of dollars in lost income.
If you do not have a way to get the contact information for every customer you have ever had in your place of business, you need to get a system in place today.
The best information is to have name, address, email address, phone number, purchasing history, ads and promotions that each customer has responded to.
You can recreate some of your customer lists by getting software and putting the information in by hand from past transactions, credit card receipts, etc. Whatever you do, start on it today and get that information into your database.
The LIST is GOLD.
Teach your customer service reps and salespeople to get the contact information from every person who comes into your store. Larger companies have rewards programs. The customer feels as though they are getting a benefit from the discount they receive, but the business owner is building their list daily by soliciting this information from each customer, and then tracking their purchases and ad responses.
There is no reason that a small business should conduct business in any other way.