Hold On To The Clients You Have

-By Raymond "Chip" Lambert

Did you know that it is more expensive to acquire new clients than to service and take care of the ones that you already have? If you know your cost to acquire new clients (the cost to acquire the lead plus the value of the time you spend to convert that lead) you can easily see that making small investments in the relationships you already have can cost you much less and yield you much more, via relationship referrals, than simply getting caught in the transaction trap of constantly acquiring and losing clients. The Top 5 things you can do to set up a "Thank You" program:

1. Get to know your clients. Find out how they liked to be thanked. Find out their birthdays and anniversaries. Find out what is important to them. Then put a plan together to give it to them.

2. Research your options. There are all kinds of things you can do: send custom gift baskets, send cards, email drip campaigns, brownies, referral programs, etc. Spend some time and examine what you could be doing.

3. Systematize your choices. Will you do something monthly? Will you do something quarterly? Write it out and systematize it. There are lots of great programs out there that allow you to set it and forget it. It goes to work FOR you.

4. Make personal outreach calls. Personal touches far outweigh impersonal touches - so pick up the phone and talk with your customers. Find out how they are doing and help them be successful - even if they don't buy this time. It's hard for a competitor to replicate that kind of relationship.

5. Get on LinkedIn and Facebook and get connected to your customers. Increasingly, your customers are moving to online social networks.. They'll share a wealth of information that will help you better serve them and build the kind of relationships that last a lifetime.

It doesn't matter if you can't invest a sizeable sum in each client. Just make sure that it's less than or equal to your current cost of client acquisition. Doing something is better than doing nothing. So stop what you're doing, take 30 minutes to begin implementing something, and harvest the results for years to come.


Raymond Chip Lambert is a business development expert who works with professionals to leverage the relationships they already have. His clients experience dramatic increases in profitable business by implementing time tested strategies and leveraging new technologies. He can be reached by email at chip@network2networth.com or by phone 602-635-4541