Apr 7 2010
Do You Know Your Lifetime Customer Value?
Do you know what a customer is worth? By that, I don’t mean the value of a single sale, but rather the ongoing value of their business and the value of their referrals over time.
This is called your “lifetime customer value”.
So, why is this important?
Because you probably underestimate the value of your customers and focus too much on finding new ones instead of making sure you keep those you already have.
In fact, a survey done by marketing guru, Dan Kennedy, showed that the largest single reason businesses lose customers is because the customer does not feel their business is appreciated.
An amazing 68% of all lost customers are lost for this reason alone.
We all know that it is far less costly to keep a customer than to find a new one, but we still tend to take our customers for granted and focus on finding new ones.
Why do we do this?
For most of us, it’s too time consuming or costly to call each of our customers every month, take them to lunch or otherwise show them we appreciate them.
Once you understand the concept of “lifetime customer value”, you can then see how important it can be to stay in touch and build those personal relationships that can last for years.
When you send people personal notes of appreciation with no other agenda or commercial messages, you will shock and impress them.
Send birthday cards, thank people for taking the time to meet with you, thank them for an order, thank them for a referral, send “nice to meet you” notes to people you just met, and more.
In fact, look for reasons and ways to appreciate your customers on a personal level and it will come back to you many times over because no one else does it.
Whether you do this manually yourself or whether you use an automated system like we have available doesn’t matter – just make sure you do it!
Follow Me