LISTEN! PLEASE JUST LISTEN!!

Customer retention is so much cheaper and easier that customer acquisition.  But I see it time and time again, where small business owners work their butts off to try and get customers to come to their place of business and buy their products, but fail to build a relationship with their customers.  As a marketer, I know how absolutely vital it is to generate awareness of a company.  But, where advertising creates an image for your company, your relationship building skills (or unfortunately as we’ve all seen, lack thereof) solidifies that image in the eyes of the consumer.

Your primary focus is to listen to your customers.  You’ve gotten them interested enough to come to your store/office/etc.  Now ask questions and really (I mean REALLY) listen to what they have to say. 

So, what questions do I ask?  Don’t get so wrapped up in a conversation about your business and what you can do for your customer.  Your goal is to dig a little deeper, find out stuff about the person.  People like to talk about themselves and the things they tell you can be incredibly enlightening.  You can learn so much from your customers.  And by taking the time to listen to them, you are creating an atmosphere of trust.  That trust goes a long way in developing a long-term relationship with your customers. 

Years ago, when I was a manager of cellular phone store, I had a gentleman come into my store to find out some stuff about phones.  He was an older guy, maybe in his 60’s and knew nothing about cell phones, but his kids were telling him he should get one for emergencies.  He must have spent about 45 minutes in the store that day.  We had quite a conversation about his kids, his grandkids and his love of motorcycles.  He left the store that day without a phone, but he came back about 2 weeks later with his son to get himself a phone.  When he arrived, I had just stepped out of the store for a minute, so he told my co-worker that he would wait for me because he told her, “She knows me”.  Based on all of the information I had gathered from him, I got him exactly what he needed… nothing fancy or expensive, but something that was useful for him.  The one thing he hadn't mentioned in our conversations was that his son was a business owner.  A month after I made the sale to the father, the son came in and wanted to switch ALL of his company’s current cellular business lines to us.  He said that he was so impressed with how I treated his dad, that he wanted to be sure his company and his employees would get that same service.  They became long-time customers of ours all because I took the time to listen to his dad.

So, take the time to engage in a 2-way conversation with your customers.  Don’t just go off on some rehearsed sales pitch about what you can do for them. Of course you can’t please everybody all the time, but your goal here is to let the customer know that you sincerely want to hear what they have to say.  Let’s face it, we all want to be heard, understood and appreciated from time to time.  Let your customers know that you are genuinely interested in what they have to say. You never know where that relationship can lead to.