Retaining your first ten customers

It is the Christmas season, and i plan to leave you with a little gift of mine. By showing you the reason why you are loosing clients and what to do to retain them and make a come back, whether you use and MVP or MDP this still applies because you need to sell the products, ok and MVP is Minimum Viable Product is a key lean start up concept popularized by Eric Ries. The idea is to validate learning with the least amount of effort. After all, why waste time building a product without first testing its worth. Minimum Desirable Product MDP,it is a subtle difference with big implications. An MDP will focus primarily on whether or not you are providing an insanely great product, experience and creating value for the end user.

No matter which product category you offer your intention is to pass a value to the customer while creating profit. Customers need to be acquired and some companies spend a ton of money on paid adverts, Samsung, LG etc. spend millions of dollars annually on paid adverts which in turn this helps increase sales, Small businesses can not afford thousands of dollars in adverts regularly or in large advertising campaigns, and when you do make that sacrifice you want to ensure you not just acquire new customers but retain them as well over a life time period. So here are two reasons why you probably are loosing clients lack of  follow up and ignoring the value of a customer.

Follow Up

This probably the most important way to get things done generally and it is no doubt when it applies to your business in particular, for those who have worked in the corporate world you understand after sending that email for the meeting you have to follow up with another email hours to the meeting and sometimes contact people to ensure maximum attendance.

The truth is people get caught up with other activities and  might forget about your engagement as in this current time 24 hours is proven to be small for firms, same applies with customers after acquiring your customer you will have to follow up with regular updates and advice about your products and other services so when and if there is a new product or service that you offer you have an already existing customer base, who can among many things spread the word nad act as source of advertisement.

Therefore following up regularly by applying various techniques to keep in contact with your customers and creating that communication line is very important, this build trust and can help analyse the life time value of your customer base, which will help you know what marketing techniques to apply which will create customer loyalty

Customer Value

 I can not stress to you how important every single customer is, both those that buy for a $1 and those that buy for a $1000 of course you might run a premium on the high end buyers but with the right, constructive and positive follow up the $1 buyer can become a premium buyer or offer referrals that could rake in revenue of thousand of dollars.

Derek Co founder and CEO of Next Step China in his interview with Andrew of Mixergy validates this point, letting his employees know the importance of taking care of both the first small client and the first big client in the same way. This is a practical technique easily applicable with guaranteed results.

As you work with your business in this Festive season when the demand from your customers are high, always put in mind that every single customer deserves the same care and follow up to bring in the next dollar and bolster customer loyalty, no business can survive solely on new customers every time,