Growing your business in any environment is difficult, but in today’s market, it is especially difficult. However, there are three easy ways to go about growing your business. You can have deep discounted sales (which will grow your top line, but not your profits), you could acquire more customers (which will again grow your top line but not necessarily make you more profitable) or you could focus on retaining customers. One surefire way to go about retaining customers is to make sure that you were not only talking to them, but also helping them become better. There are three easy ways to help your customers add value that cost you little to no money.
Networks and Contacts
A surefire way to help your customers grow their businesses is to consider opening up your list of networks and contacts to your customers. Invariably, some of your network will need some of the products your customers sell. Like anything, you must do this very sparingly and not abuse your network. However, when you do this, you create a symbiotic relationship between your network, your customers, and yourself. In the end, all three entities will benefit.
Google News
Another sure fire way to help add value to your customer’s relationship is to utilize Google’s news alerts digests. Google has a free service where you can sign up to have daily or weekly news digests sent to you on a variety of keywords that you previously establish. For example, if you sell lighting supplies, you might consider setting up a Google News alert any time information on efficient lighting, lighting design, or articles on how companies distribute LED lighting on the internet. This way, the computer and Google will do all the hard work for you. You then need to make sure that you take this information, sort through it, and send it to appropriate any you could send your information to school systems, government purchasing departments, and advertising agencies. This is a great way to help you better endear yourself to your customers.
Old-Fashioned Sleuthing
While this method is an old method, is certainly tried-and-true. This method involves nothing more than you reading the paper on a daily basis and looking for the names of your customers, or articles that might interest them. This way when you see either of the two, you simply attach a note to the article stating that you were simply thinking of them and would love to talk to them about this idea and one that made you think about them.
Separating yourself on the competition is extremely difficult today. However, many often say that the most successful people are the ones who work smartest and hardest. These three ideas will show you how to help retain more of your customers by constantly adding value at every interaction. Are you up for the challenge?