Customer & Team Loyalty

Retention and loyalty go hand in hand in business. This rings true for both your customers and team members.

Let’s start with customer loyalty.

The key to success in business is a positive customer experience, during and after the transaction. Being in tune with your customer’s needs and being a good listener are important to attracting and retaining customers. Direct marketing is a relationship business, so creating relationships is crucial in building lifelong customers.

Here are 4 key actions to ensure Customer Retention and Loyalty.

1 Make customer service a priority. If you want loyal customers, amazing customer service is a must. Demonstrate customer appreciation, solve problems in a timely fashion, provide responsive and proactive customer service, and give instructions on product usage.

2 Reward your customers. Customers want to feel appreciated. After all, they can choose to spend their money anywhere, and they’ve chosen you. Acknowledging and thanking them often for their support of your small business goes a long way! Set up a loyalty program, or just simply offer customers discounts, gifts, and exclusive offers.

3 Be consultative. Know your customers and be consultative. You are the problem solver, not a product or service pusher. Reach out to them when their favorite product or service is on special, or when it’s time to potentially repurchase their favorite product. Offer suggestions on new products to enhance the current product line or regimen they are using (upsell or addon).

4 Consistently engage with your customers. It is important to remain visible to your customers. However, if you only connect with your customers when you want them to buy something, you’ll have trouble keeping them around for the long haul. First and foremost, follow up with your customers and ask for honest feedback. Always be on top of things happening in the industry educate the customer with tutorials and share new trends.

Are you a leader in the business? Let’s talk about team loyalty and retention. Like customer retention and loyalty, team loyalty and retention is also about building relationships and rapport. Team members want to be aligned with leaders who have open communication, share and ask for feedback, recognize, and reward. Create an environment YOU would want to be a part of!

I love this quote from John C. Maxwell because it pretty much sums up what a leader is and should be: “A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way.”

Here are 4 key actions to ensure Team Retention and Loyalty.

1 Lead with enthusiasm. Lead with an enthusiasm that is contagious to everyone around you. Positivity always wins. People trust and follow people they like and who are invested in their success.

2 Be a good listener and provide feedback. Listen and understand before being understood. Understanding where someone is and their goals is imperative. It’s not about you, it’s about them. Also, team members need reassurance about how they’re doing to stay motivated and engaged. This creates open communication, which is crucial.

3 Walk the walk. Lead by example and make sure you are practicing what you preach. I never ask my team to do things I am unwilling to do. A leader leads and positively influences rather than giving directives and barking orders.

And 4...

4 Reward and recognize. Recognition and reward are very important in the loyalty of team members. Recognition and rewards can come in many different forms, and it increases engagement from a team member. The key to a good recognition program is identifying the driver of what matters to a team member. And remember to congratulate others’ success no matter how big or small.…it matters!