Losing customers through neglect or sloppiness is especially painful in tough times.  The cost of replacing them is higher and the difficulty of replacing them greater. This is the time to increase the frequency and quality of communication with customers, to reward their loyalty, to incentive-ise their patronage. It is amazing to me just how bad most salespeople and business owners are at this, even in good economic times!

 

Pay attention to this…. just doing what you do competently or delivering your product as agreed is NOT enough to earn your customer’s subsequent business. In tough times, your competitors quickly resort to price cutting, so your customers will have cheaper prices shoved in their faces even more than usual. If you are not countering this with a “quality relationship”, you WILL lose.

Your most valuable asset, regardless of the economy, is your list of clients and prospects. Even more important is your relationship with them, and what they know you for, in other words, what makes you stand out in their mind. This is particularly true in a difficult economic climate.

The point is that preservation of your customer base and its value becomes dramatically more important the tougher the economy is.  In truth, most businesses that fail, large or small, do not do so because of an inability to attract customers; they fail because of an inability to keep customers coming back.

It was P.T. Barnum who said, “You can’t catch a whale with a minnow”. What he means there, is most people in business are trying to be successful, or have unreasonable expectations of the results they’ll achieve using “plain vanilla”, boring advertising and marketing. The one thing your clients and prospects won’t put up with is being bored.

 

The ‘wimpifying’ and ‘sissifying’ of Australia by the bleeding heart set continues to sadden me. Believe me, big brother and all his relies are watching and sadly they have nothing more constructive to do.

A while back, a client of mine successfully offended the stuffed shirt peers in her industry. I know she yells “Hurrah” every time she gets complaints and hate mail from some simpering nitwit without a life.  In fact, my daughter who owns several pizza stores, although I might add, she doesn’t work in them, she works on them, recently offended a few prospects with her incredible brass balls and marketing tactics.

You see, she knows the most important thing you’ve got to do in advertising is to get seen and read. So instead of sticking her advertising in the letterbox, along with all the clutter from the other dumb pizza companies, she ties her advertising on their fence, gate or door handle. This offends a few, but the upside potential is well worth it.

In author Murray Raphel’s book entitled instructionally “Would Saks Do That?” referring to the Department Store Saks Fifth Avenue he tells the story of how a restaurant was created by giving away a no-strings attached free lunch. Yes, I know what you’re thinking, “It’d cost a fortune to do that!” But my argument would be “But only a fraction of what it cost to set the restaurant up in the first place.”

Let’s say they gave away $4,000 - $5,000 worth of free lunches. These free lunches were really good as hundreds of the people who tried them came back and brought all of their friend’s with them, and ultimately converted into regular clients of the restaurant. I can assure you that this method would be far more impacting and far less expensive than most other forms of traditional advertising.

Any business could adapt this strategy, but darn few ever will. If you want to enjoy the spoils of success in business, you’ve got to have guts. No guts, no glory.

The lesson there is often a direct correlation between the passionate positive response you get and your willingness to offend.

Why? Because many companies cut back on direct-mail in favor of e-mail, or other so-called “easier” and cheaper forms of marketing. Others cut back because of the postal increase, so there is less competition, less clutter in the mailbox! So, the “tigers” eat even better than usual in the jungle and starve last. Become the tiger of your jungle. The exact same thing occurs in a soft economy: the herd starves, but the tigers eat even better!

Competitors’ negative “over-response” to the changing economic conditions means more opportunity for you. Of course, you might target different potential customers. Or alter your message. But you should still go out after them full bore.

An analogy – overall last year, most major users of direct-mail saw increases in response to their “controls” – their previous predictable response rate. Why? Because their competitors were cutting back and looking for a cheaper alternative. The best part about your competitor cutting back is that it will thin the herd. When good times come around as they always do, there’ll be less competitors and less clutter for you.

 

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