More marketing means nothing if your client retention is low. The success rate of selling to a customer you already have is 60-70%, while the success rate of selling to a new customer is 5-20%.
By listening [and taking notes], you’ll learn:
This episode is one you’ll definitely want to prioritise, it’s the quickest way to grow and stabilise your business for the long haul.
Enjoy!
Resources:
If you’d like to work together with me as your 1:1 business and marketing consultant, book a call here.
More marketing means nothing if your client retention is low. The success rate of selling to a customer you already have is 60-70%, while the success rate of selling to a new customer is 5-20%.
By listening [and taking notes], you’ll learn:
This episode is one you’ll definitely want to prioritise, it’s the quickest way to grow and stabilise your business for the long haul.
Enjoy!
Resources:
If you’d like to work together with me as your 1:1 business and marketing consultant, book a call here.
H ey guys. Welcome to the podcast, super excited to jump into this episode today.
Shannon Stone:Today, we are talking about improving your client retention. Now, this has to be one of my most favorite episodes I'm going to share, and it's for a lot of different reasons. One of the big reasons is because when you focus on things like client retention, you're generally getting to the root cause of, I guess, the areas that are slowing you down from achieving your goals, and a lot of people think, when they've got sales goals or client goals or revenue goals, it just comes down to acquiring more clients or new clients. But we can't ever forget that you also need to focus on client retention as well. You may or may not know, but I used to run a marketing agency for over five years and what I definitely found through that process, especially with talking to businesses and this is one of the big reasons why I went into more consulting is when people would tell me their goals, and I would do that regardless whether I was consulting or in the marketing agency. But I would always try to understand what are you doing, why are we doing this, and figure out what is happening in their business so that I can actually provide a proper solution. And so many times it was never about the marketing. It's like we don't need new campaigns here. You actually just need to get to the root cause of particular things in your business, and client retention was definitely one of them, so very excited to talk about it today.
Shannon Stone:If you don't know what client retention is, basically it's keeping clients, it is keeping them longer and you could even extend it to say it's having those clients spend more with you. So as a business, you want your I guess everyone's different but you want your business to be growing not growing, at least stable. You want to keep those clients ideally for as long as possible where it makes sense. For some people, in particular cases or particular services, it doesn't make sense for them to keep working with them for long periods of time. But there can also be an argument to create certain things that you can work with them for long periods of time. So take this the way that it makes sense to your business.
Shannon Stone:I do have a couple of stats for the left brainers of us around client retention, so let me throw them at you. Of us around client retention, so let me throw them at you. Acquiring a new customer can cost five times more than retaining an existing customer. So if we just think about that, it's like do we want to get more clients all the time? Well, yes, we do want more clients coming through, but we also want to focus on keeping the clients that we do have. And for that very stat there, it costs five times more to generate new customers than it does to retain an existing customer. So even if you are not paying to acquire your clients, you know you're not running ads, you're not investing in certain things to bring more clients to you. You'll probably be paying for it with time. So there'll be more of a delay rather than a financial outlay, so definitely want to keep those customers.
Shannon Stone:Another one is increasing customer retention by five percent can increase your profits from 25 to 95. So what that means is if you focus on keeping the customers you do have putting more attention and focus on it overall in the business, you can dramatically increase your profits. And they said between 25% and 95%. That's a very big range of a percentage, but it definitely we can probably both agree it definitely increases your profits, no matter what percentage it might be. The last couple of stats I will share with you is the success rate of selling to a customer you already have is 60 to 70%, while the success rate of selling to a new customer is between 5 and 20%. So what they're saying there is if you've got something to sell and you try to sell that to an existing customer, you're much more likely to have them say yes rather than selling that exact same thing to a brand new customer. You might want to sell it to both of them. But let's never discredit the clients and customers you have right in front of you.
Shannon Stone:So I wanted to share those because I think stats and data can really showcase to people how important it really is. Even this week with some of my clients, several of them actually have had some incredible months compared to the same time last year, and we're not even halfway through the month and, as I love to do, I like to dive in and work out what is the reason that we are having really good months, and for both these particular clients, it was about retaining clients, and there were particular strategies that we did as well to instigate this, which I will share some of those with you today. But you don't need to tell me that client retention works. That's what I want to do for you. So I want to showcase that to you in a couple of different ways, and the data and the real-time stories are a couple of ways that we can do that. So, before I jump in and share the three different areas that can help you to improve your client retention, I lastly want to land on this Now you can create all the marketing you want you can focus on, you know, getting new clients and all those kind of things and getting seen and increasing your visibility and all the different strategies. But if clients are leaving as quickly as they're coming in, like we've got a problem and this problem is never going to go away until you start to put some focus on it. So, as much as you want to focus on marketing and lead generation and new clients, I hope that you at some point get to the position where you say you know what. How can we keep the clients that do come to us?
Shannon Stone:One which will probably surprise a lot of people is by looking at your offer, so your offer being your package or your service, the very thing that you sell, and you might have multiple of these, but it can be a very simple fix to someone's client retention to review what it is they're actually selling and looking at. Well, is your offer set up in a way to retain those clients? And a very easy example if you are, say you were a consultant and you sell your services by sessions, so you could say you can book me for one session whenever you want, type of thing. The opposite to that is maybe your sessions are bundled up into three months, six months, 12 months. So it's so much easier for someone to work with you for a small space of time if they're only buying one of your sessions, whereas if you package it up into three, six, 12 months, in this case you're already retaining that client so much longer. Now this is going to bring up things like oh well, do people want to work with me for that long? Without going into like an offer masterclass here on the podcast which we should definitely do, I do have an excellent Facebook live training I did on offers and the best way to set them up, which I will link in the show notes for us.
Shannon Stone:But looking at your offer and what you're selling is a really big way to improve your client retention. And, long story short, what I always do with people is say well, what is that result you want to help your clients to achieve? And, like no holds bar, what is the best way to pack this up, your process, the way of working with you, so that they achieve that result? And I almost guarantee it doesn't come down to selling your time for one hour. It's probably going to come into multiple sessions or multiple ways of how you're packaging that up, but that's the best way to do it. What is the result that you're trying to help someone to achieve and what is the best way you can help them to achieve that? And that is how you create your offer and that is how your offer becomes very easy to sell because you've looked at the end result they want to create. You've brought your expertise to the table and you've built something as a process, a way of working with them phases, however, it is that you work different sessions, different structures over a different schedule, whatever it is, and that's designed to suit them the client, as long as possible, and that will be a common thread you'll find overall through this podcast, it's not just about making more sales, which it's all here to help you to do but when we can do it from the perspective of how can we help our people as much as possible? With some marketing sales prowess, we can really help them to achieve incredible results and, by default, you, as the business owner, will also achieve incredible results as well.
Shannon Stone:So the first area that I wanted to share is around your offer. So looking at that to see, are there any gaps there? Are there any holes that are causing people to leave quicker than we would like? That is number one. Number two is your delivery, so your client delivery, or the way that you actually work with people. It's very easy for someone to say I don't want to work with you anymore If it's a terrible experience to work with you, they're not getting what they want. The flip side to this is that you do exceptional work by your clients and I imagine this is a given based on what you do. But if client retention or people are not sticking around as much as you would like them to, please look at your client delivery.
Shannon Stone:Even if you get amazing reviews, all the kind of things, all the praise, still look at it, still ask for feedback. What could we improve? What could we do differently? What did you like? What didn't you like? You know all those type of questions, but look at the delivery and look at what your clients are getting from you and look at what you're promising them in the beginning as well. It's not just about the final result that they get or the final package or whatever it is that you do sell. It often comes down to what did you promise we were going to get and did we actually get that? A lot of people will think they need to over deliver and you are totally welcome to do that, but at the end of the day, people just want what it says on the tin. It's really easy to keep them happy. If you give them X, y, z, you can add all the bows and the over-delivery on top, but you want to make sure that you give them what you said you're going to give them. So client delivery is really important when it comes to client retention. So I think that you know that's almost like a given one.
Shannon Stone:And then the third and final area that I want to share with you to help you to improve your client retention is looking at your process, or your processes, and do you have certain things which I'll run you through certain things in place to help facilitate clients sticking with you much longer? There's a few ways that you can do this. One is around and it's not making people do anything they don't want to do. But are you, I guess, helping to facilitate clients staying with you or returning to work with you, and do you have processes in place in order to do that? So if you package up your services into six months, for example, and you do want clients to continue working with you into another round of six months and another round of six months, what processes do you have in place to help make that happen, to help facilitate that and, at the very least, raise it as an opportunity for them to see if they do want to continue working with you. Maybe it's as simple as asking the question Now that we're nearing the end of our six months together. Have a conversation with them around what their next six months can look like, and just ask the question about working together.
Shannon Stone:Beyond that, another process that you can have is making sure that you're following up with your clients in a timely manner. So for some people, they're working with you at the same time every year, or they're ordering things from you at the same time every year. Now, if you know from you at the same time every year, now, if you know this and this is particularly relevant for seasonal businesses, and I think so many service-based businesses have seasonal times where they could leverage that and reach out to their clientele, whether it's things like dates in the calendar, like Christmas and Easter and all those kinds of things, or in a business, business perspective. Maybe it's the new year, it's the new financial year, it is particular sales opportunities throughout the year, like Black Fridays. If you run a marketing agency and your clients should be doing Black Friday sales, from your perspective, why not reach out to them at the time you know? If it's Black Friday, you want to be reaching out several months earlier so you can get their campaigns ready and all those kind of things, but getting some processes in place to make sure you are following up with your existing and past clients to say, hey, we worked with you on this previously, would love to work with you again on this, because we know it's coming up. Or even if they haven't worked with you on that particular seasonal thing, maybe now's the opportunity to do so because you know your other clients get a lot of great results when they work with you at that seasonal time.
Shannon Stone:Another process that you can add is reaching out when it's relevant to your particular client or to your particular business. Now, this would be highly personalized to you and what you do. But say, for example, your clients won an award, so if you notice that's a relevant time to reach out to your clients, maybe they won an award and they don't really know what to do next, but maybe you have a skill set that helps them to leverage the fact that they won an award, so that could be a relevant time to reach out. So what I would do is take these couple of processes that I've suggested and just apply them to you. So what are the seasonal times when you could be reaching out to past and current clients. What are the other trigger moments that happen? Whether they won an award or something else happens in their life or their business or in their world that you can kind of keep tabs on so that you can reach out to them and again ultimately come back to retaining them as a client, offering them a service. That is what this is about.
Shannon Stone:So they're the three ways you can improve client retention. One was looking at your offer, making sure it's set up properly, making sure that it's designed around the result that your clients are wanting to achieve. So that's number one. Number two is around your client delivery. So are you giving them what is said on the tin? Are you giving them with what you said you would right in the beginning? And then number three is your processes. So processes around when engagements start to come to an end. Is there a process in place to help them to re-sign with you, to work with you for another round? Are there different seasonal events that happen and putting a process around that? Or the particular trigger moments that happen where you can reach out to them because it is really relevant? So they're the three areas that can help you to increase client retention.
Shannon Stone:Let's jump into the action step. So the best way I find to turn this into something valuable for you, make it really simple for you to improve your client retention. Now you can do a complete audit of your business across those three areas if you like, but I think the most practical and tangible way is to look at a client and you can do this with several clients, but I've got. Look at a client that you're working with and ask yourself what could you do to make them stay with you longer? What else do they need from you? Or what is missing from your offer, from your delivery, from your process? But you want to make it specific, to choose a client that you're working with and use them as the guinea pig of. Well, how could I make this client and I don't mean make like twist their arm or anything like that, but how could I ensure or help facilitate that this client works with me for as long as possible?
Shannon Stone:Not for the sole reason to you know, grow your business. That's not the only reason. That is a byproduct of the real reason, which is to help them. I think, if we can come back to that, it's like you're actually here to actually help people. You're a service, you're delivering a service to people, so just remember that. So sometimes people can feel like maybe it's like money mindset things that pop up, of like always chasing sales. It's when you're chasing sales generally, you're just really, at the end of the day, trying to help people. But sometimes we can kind of get our wires crossed and think we're doing the wrong thing by, you know, actively going after sales. So little reminder there. But I want you to focus in on a particular client and see what could you do to facilitate them working with you longer. And it's a great exercise because it gets you to see what possible gaps there are in your business, know what else would they need from you and if you've got that relationship, if you're happy to talk to this client about this.
Shannon Stone:I want to do this exercise to you know, improve my business to retain clients longer and, you know, do a bit of market research with them. But looking at well, what is missing from your offer? Where are certain points where people fall off or break down from your services? Is there something on your delivery that is a little bit off? Maybe you can be a little bit slow, or maybe the communication does lag at certain times, or maybe there's certain things that are just not happening. That could be happening that improves your delivery or with your process as well. It's like does it come to a sudden stop when you finish working with clients and it feels really weird. Maybe you could put a process in place or put some communication in place or redesign your offer a little bit so that it doesn't feel very jagged right at the end of working with someone, whatever that looks like for you.
Shannon Stone:But that's the action step I have for you Think about these things, but think about it from the lens of one particular client. We don't have to think about this from your whole business and everyone that you work with, and that's a great little tip that I will use. It's like let's just think about one client and what they're going through and walk in their shoes and let's just make this apply to this particular person and then the answers we get out of that generally will apply to everyone. So that is what I have for you today. I hope you found this useful. Let me know how you go with it and if you have any questions at all when it comes to client retention, about keeping your clients longer, having them work with you more definitely.
Shannon Stone:Do reach out, but I hope you have an amazing week and I'll talk to you very soon.