Small Business Managers - Don't Forget Your Profit Generators

One of the fundamental rules of small business management is to never take your customers for granted. These are the people that you exist for. You have spent time and money in persuading them to purchase from you, so you have made an investment in time and money. If you ignore them, they will go away and be seduced by your competition. How many times have you heard that customer loyalty doesn't exist these days? The reason for this widespread belief is the result of the way customers consider they are treated. You might protest and say that you give the best possible service, excellent value and a good backup to your products and services. In spite of this, you might find that you are still losing a significant number of customers.

When this happens you have to work twice as hard to replace those lost customers with new customers at some considerable expense. Many small businesses work very hard in acquiring new customers to replace the ones that inevitably stop purchasing. This process of losing customers and then replacing them is a profit limiting exercise. Everyone has heard that it is much more expensive to acquire a new customer than it does to service an existing customer. This knowledge does not seem to have any effect on the constant "churn" of customers and loss of profit experienced by a large number of small businesses.

There are three very important factors that the small business manager must incorporate in their business strategy.


No prospective or existing customer should be left alone for more than 70 days. If you don't contact your prospective or existing customers within this time, you are likely to lose them to the competition. It's important to set up systems so that you can collect contact details for prospective and existing customers and make sure that you contact them within the 70 days. You have to keep in touch with these people regularly and relentlessly. Your list of prospective and existing customers is your goldmine. Constantly add to the list by asking your existing customers for referrals.
By the time you have made five contacts with each of the people on your list, you have started off a relationship with them. This in itself will reduce the number of customers that get enticed away by your competition. In turn this will increase your profits. Because your fixed costs don't change much regardless of how many customers you have, keeping customers is vitally important in maximizing your profit. Creating and strengthening customer loyalty must be a top priority of any small business if it is to grow and thrive
Creating merely "satisfied" customers isn't good enough in today's marketplace. Countless studies have shown that satisfied customers will defect in a fraction of a second if they think they can get a better deal somewhere else. You've got to create customers whose loyalty can't be swayed no matter what your competition offers them. The process of keeping in touch and building relationships with them is a powerful way of creating loyal customers.