In difficult economic times it’s important to recognize where you can achieve the most value with your business. Retaining existing customers is important during the good times, in the bad times it’s vital. It costs more to win and service a new customer than it does to keep an existing customer happy and grow their relationship. Here are some key drivers to reduce churn in your organization.
Customer Service is the Bottom Line
The way you serve and support your customers is key to your overall business strategy. Customer service should be represented at boardroom level, and not as a subsection of sales. In a market where everyone is chasing a smaller pot – it’s absolutely essential to protect what you already have.
Customer Service Really Matters
Over 70% of clients rate customer service as the single most important factor in doing business. They place it above sales, marketing, brand, everything. Over 80% place after care for a major purchase as the determining point for future loyalty.
Your Customers Must Come First
When times are tight, people are more ready to switch suppliers or providers than ever before. Nearly 50% of consumers say that they would consider making a move if the benefits were right.
Cost Cutting Is Not The Priority
It’s easy to focus on new revenue streams and tighten care budgets, after all – sales are what count right? Wrong. Your existing customers spend more money than your new clients in most instances and serving them is cheaper than winning over new clients. Don’t slash care budgets to chase rainbows.
Well Trained Employees Deliver the Goods
If you want to have a reputation for the best customer care, then make sure your people are well prepared to deliver it. Invest in motivating, training and empowering your service staff – their level of professional competence translates directly into the customer experience. Happy clients means more money.
Engage with your customers and empathize with them
Remember your clients if you meet face to face, keep key details to make dealing with you more rewarding – on CRM systems. Use social media to broaden your reach. Make it easy for your customers to reach you, and make it easier to serve them.
Monitor Feedback and Complaints
Each complaint is potentially lost revenue, turning a complaint around successfully can bring enormous financial benefits to your business. Make sure you have the appropriate systems in place to track problems all the way through to resolution. Make sure you can analyze the data and use it to prevent some problems from occurring again in the future. In short be proactive for your customers, and don’t wait for a disaster before doing something positive.
Be Creative and Strategic
That means make sure that every point of contact is consistent in its approach and that customer delight (not satisfaction) is at the heart of what you do.
A downturn in the economy can still bring plenty of opportunities to the customer savvy business. Don’t waste that moment – go after perfection while your competitors are licking their wounds. Make your company the single best in your field, and listen to your customers tell the world about it.
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The final key to creating a killer presentation is an unavoidable step but the one that may yield the biggest returns in your growth as a public speaker. To rise to the top of your field, takes growth and change. Ideally, you need to improve every time you speak and there is only one way to gain that growth. It is through feedback. So the tenth and final key to creating a killer presentation is getting feedback.
Ask for Ideas
To really grow and improve, even to gain new and fresh ideas to keep your presentations interesting and fresh, one feedback is not enough. You need continual feedback. At the end of every event, ask your participants for feedback. Ask them what they liked and what they didn’t like about the presentation. A key to designing future presentations and workshops is to get feedback and ideas from those that attended. Ask them on which topics would they like more information. Ask them for ideas.
The best time to ask is at the end of the event. This is when people are usually networking and socializing with each other building business contacts. It is also a time when they debrief with each other and dissect the seminar. This gives you the perfect opportunity to begin establishing your speaking business. All business is dependent firstly on relationships. Take the time to interact with your audience and test your market by asking them what they want to hear and learn. You should not ignore this step as it will increase the value of your speaking career. Greet them, express your pleasure at seeing them there and ask them what they loved best about the seminar, and what they would like to hear more of in the future.
Self Confidence First
Now it takes courage to ask for constructive criticism, however this feedback will really help you grow and improve your product. However, it takes self-confidence. You have to get yourself out of the way and focus on the benefits to your audience. When you have their best interest at heart, and truly desire to help them improve their lives by sharing your expertise, asking this next question will be easy. “Please tell me if there was anything that you didn’t like.” If you consistently get the same feedback that there was a certain gesture or a certain topic they did not enjoy, then it may convince you to stop doing that in the future.
However, be sure you can take the criticism without reacting. Even if it was something you thought was your strongest point, and the feedback smarts, simply smile and thank them for the valuable feedback. You can fix your bruised ego later, but that feedback may help you make significant changes to your presentation, which will boost your audience attendance, and therefore increase your business. Being open to this kind of feedback allows you to continually build your business to the next level. As you improve, your product improves and promotion will take care of itself, because people talk, and word of mouth referrals will help promote your speaking more than anything else.
In Conclusion
If you take these ten keys and apply them to your speaking skills, the results will speak for themselves. You will give a killer presentation that people remember and talk about to others. You will change lives, you will grow, and you will stand out from the majority who could not be bothered to put in the effort to improve.
In the end, it will yield tremendous results.
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It has been said that in life you tend to get what you think about most of the time. Books like “The Secret” and “Think and Grow Rich” go into great detail about how your thoughts create you life.
In my mind it’s all about the power of intention. What do you want? Who do you want to be? Where do you want to go?
If you get what you think about most of the time, doesn’t it make sense that you should be careful about what you are thinking about? It’s all about FOCUS.
I read this excellent article the other day about Navy SEALs and their ability to focus on important details. The Navy SEALs are among the most elite of our armed services. Only the best of the best make it into the SEALs. The article centers on the SEALs ability to detect and react to anger and danger while ignoring lesser important details. It infers that this ability makes them more effective on the battlefield.
The message is a great one: Focus on what’s really important to getting “The Mission” done. Realize that “The Mission” might be a relationship, business, sport, family or financial goal and avoid getting distracted or slowed down by the things that can (and will) prevent you from reaching your goals.
Time for a FOCUS CHECK: How focused are you on your goals? How easily do people or events distract you from achieving those goals? If you are like most people I know, then the answer is: not very and too often.
It’s inevitable that at some point you will be distracted. There is nothing wrong with that. In fact it’s essential. Remember the adage “All work and no play make Jack a dull boy”. If you didn’t have any “down time” you’d go crazy.
The key to success however is to not lose sight of your goals and to get back on track as soon as possible. Be like the SEALs; aware of all that’s going on around you but focused only on those things that are critical to the outcome you desire.
If you can do that on a consistent basis, then you will become a SEAL: Successful in Every Aspect of Life
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