Are your clients likely to think of your business next time they need something that you supply? Or are they going to head back to Google and end up turning to one of your competitors?

Whatever you sell, it’s important to establish a long-term relationship with your clients. Here’s why:

It’s much cheaper to KEEP a customer than to GET a customer

How much time (and money) do you spend getting new customers for your business?

And how much time (and money) do you spend selling more products or services to your existing customers?

Far too many businesses spend almost all their time and money focused on getting new customers. Perhaps they assume that existing customers have already bought everything they want, or that they’ll buy when they’re ready – or they simply don’t understand how valuable their existing customers are.

If your main focus is on new customers, you’re really missing out. This guide on how to make $1000 fast explains that:

“‍Research shows its 5X as expensive to attract a new customer as it is to keep an existing one. Yet very few businesses make an effort to follow up!”

Repeat Clients Bring Stability to Your Business

Are you constantly having to hustle to get new clients? Maybe you have some months when you’re struggling to keep up with all the work coming in … and other months where you’re desperately hoping that the phone will ring.

Repeat clients give your business stability. When you know that clients who buy one service are likely to go on and buy another, it’s easier to predict your cashflow.

Customer retention is more important now than ever. If your business has been hard-hit by coronavirus, then you may well find that the best way to turn things around isn’t to seek new customers … it’s to focus on the customer base you already have.

Building Long-Term Relationship With Your Clients Doesn’t Need to Be Hard

You might think that it’ll take a lot of time and resources to build long-term relationships with your clients. 

That doesn’t need to be the case. There are lots of simple things you can do to successfully retain clients, such as:

• Send a loyalty discount to your previous clients. This takes virtually no time at all … and could easily result in a boost in sales.
• Keep in touch with your previous clients. Depending on your business and the size of your client base, that might mean anything from personal phone calls to a mass email newsletter. What matters is that you have a way to keep your brand top-of-mind.
• Ask clients for a testimonial or referral. While this is a great way to boost your marketing efforts in getting new clients, providing a testimonial can also help your existing client feel more connected to your business and brand.
• Send holiday cards or small gifts to your clients. This can be a lovely gesture, especially if you’ve worked closely with someone.
• Create a special group, such as a private Facebook mastermind, for your clients. This is a great way to help solve their problems, and it lets you easily market “early bird” offers or run a beta test of a new product or service.

Setting aside just 30 - 60 minutes a week could be enough to win repeat business from your existing clients. Work out an action plan today of what you could do over the next month or two to build those long-term relationships: you’ll be reaping the dividends for years to come.