| What's next after someone becomes your customer? What's next is to deliver on what you said you would. People expect you to deliver results. Surprise them by also going the extra mile over and over again. You can also deliver it around meetings. In most organizations, it's easy for you to deliver additional value around meetings because most companies run meetings poorly. Capture important notes during your meetings and deliver your neatly typed notes consistently with your customer's format. Not only will it allow you to capture the main ideas and benefits of important discussions, but also your customer's team members will almost always appreciate it. Send this as soon after the meeting as possible. As soon as you get a new customer, thank them for doing business with you. Send them a thank you note, an extra report, or something of value. Let them know that you appreciate their business and show them that you care about them. It can have an amazing effect! One small act that shows how much you value your new customer can create a customer for life. The formula for having your customers turn into raving fans is a good product and great service. Interestingly enough, a good product and bad service gives you unhappy customers no matter how good your product is. But what is the best way to turn first-time customers into repeat customers? It's to make sure that you really over-deliver! In fact, you should under-promise and over-deliver... just the opposite of what we often see. Tell people what you will do for them and then do it. Over-deliver, but don't over-promise. Most companies do just the opposite. They want that sale so they promise their customers the moon, but then they fall just a little short. They might have provided exceptional customer service, but excellent service loses its luster if it falls short of the promise. In fact, it's worse than not promising at all. The bottom line is that you must organize your business so that you always exceed, but absolutely never fall short of a promise to a customer. By great service, you can make sure that your customers will stick with you. A study has shown that it takes 16 times the effort to get a new customer as it does to sell to an existing one. So treasure them all and treat them like a $1m customer. When you have satisfied customers, they will buy more and more from you. They have already experienced you, your services or products, and your quality of service so the decision process is so much easier for them. They will become your walking, talking sales force. They believe in you and your services or products so much so that they will voluntarily tell others about you. Develop relationships with your customers so you can continue to discover what they want. Then provide offers that deliver what they want so they choose to do more business with you. This is another huge key to your success. It is the key to maximizing the lifetime value of a customer. From time to time, do a customer satisfaction survey. Test to see if your customers are happy with your service and ask them for suggestions for improvement. Then act on these suggestions. If you have a dissatisfied customer, you have an opportunity. People who are unhappy will tell other people and so on and so forth. Get the picture? So, when you have a dissatisfied customer, you have an opportunity to have them experience your excellent service and to build an even stronger relationship with you. Accept complaints graciously and treat them as though they are nuggets of pure gold. These are your opportunities to improve and increase loyalty. So sort their problems out quickly and they will then tell others good things about you. Use these tips well and you can become successful with any product or service you have. Treasure your customers and they will treasure you. Treasure your customers and more customers will be attracted to you. That is how it works!
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