Top Tips to Getting Repeat Customers

To nurture your business, it’s enticing to focus on generating new sales or retaining bigger accounts. The most important of all is to emphasize on your old customers, irrespective of how small they are, to keep your business flourishing. There are some basic guidelines and secrets to receive repeat business from your existing clients. It is all about right approach to follow up them implying proper CRM strategy that has a right impact on the customer without irritating them.

The most promising follow-up starts just after the sale. The moment you contact your customer to say “thank you” you must cross check if they are happy with the product/services. In addition, there are many effective and time tested CRM methodologies to follow up to ensure your brand is there in your customer’s mind.

1.Make Aware your Customers What You Have for Them

You can do this by shooting newsletter, or something more casual, like a quick phone call. You can opt for the right method to say connected with your customers. The core is to make them aware of the excellent service you’re offering them. Mention everything you are planning and doing for them. Let them understand how your services can further simplify their work.

2.Send Loyal Customers Personalized, Handwritten Letters Frequently

You can say – “I was relaxing, and I recalled you! Hope your business is going great and you are enjoying great time dealing with your customers. Let me know in case you require another product that can align with your business exploring it further. I can send out with our latest product anytime.” This will keep them engaged and delighted.

3.Make it Personal

You must use the prowess of email and voice mail, which is the most effective CRM tool. You can leave a voice-mail message stating you wish to speak with the person personally or wish to stop by their workplace at a specific time. Face to face communication is the best when it comes to maintaining long term relations.

4.Don’t Forget Special Occasions

You must send your existing customer Birthday cards, New Year cards, Christmas cards, etc. Gifts could be the best follow-up options, too. For this, you don’t have to spend a fortune. You can be creative and deliver an innovative gift ideas associated with your business, customer’s business or their recent purchase. You can hand out a free product of your brand that can keep your name fresh in their minds.

5.Share Information

Suppose you come across an article, see a new edition of book or learn about a company that’s related to your customer, don’t hesitate to send a note or call to let them know.

6.Make Follow-up Calls a Business Development Opportunity

When you interact or visit your existing customers, you’ll mostly realize they have referrals for you that can be a new lead for your enterprise.  With so many ways that your customers can become the most resourceful channel, there is just no reason not to stay in constant touch with them.

7.Customer Service

There are many other things you can do to offer an excellent customer service. Here are some tips that can ensure that your clients get best service every time.

•     Write your customer service policy and make each of your employee aware of it. They must know the rules and be prepared to live up to them.
•     Erect right support systems delivering employees clear instructions for retaining excellent customer service quality.
•     Create a metric of superb customer service and reward employees who practice it consistently.
•     Make sure the passion for excellent customer service runs throughout your company. Make your employees aware how good CRM solutions and service impacts the business as well as your profits and to their future career with the company.
•     Be committed to deliver the best customer service than anyone else in your industry. Each of your old customer must sense it by the rigorousness you pursue it.

Excellent customer service is not only limited to what you say or do for your customer; it is also about giving customers an opportunity to make their feelings known. For this follow these tips:

1.Foster Human Bond

Take time out to take your customers and associates out to lunch, dinner or some ballgame. This will help you learn the secrets that will help you understand and go above and beyond your competition.

2.Attend Trade Shows and Industry Events

Attending such events help you find out how the competition’s working and what types of products and services customers are opting.

3.Keep Alert for Publications and Respond to Them

Have an insight of industry trade publications, be engaged in trade organizations, and pay heed to your customers are doing.

4.Seek Feedback

Keep surveying your customers frequently to understand how you’re doing. Send out paid questionnaire cards or email, call them, and set up survey groups. Seek opinions and fix the trouble areas surfaced.

Did you see, there are umpteen numbers of opportunities and tips that are available to get repeat sale through your old customers! Make use of it and watch your business grow!

Is CRM Your Cup of Tea? How to Know?

Venturing into the world of customer relationship management (CRM) can be touch. The most vital aspect before selecting, implementing, and using a CRM system is to know certain things that are crucial to survive in the dynamic ecosystem of CRM. Below are some of the most vital facts you must realize before navigating CRM technology.

1. Understand Your Needs:

Prior to considering what CRM solution to opt for, you must ascertain exactly what you expect from a CRM system. Who you are and what you do decides what you want and how CRM system can fulfill your need. You may just want your sales representatives open an account quickly, or you may require household information for your marketing team to track sales and products activities. You must be familiar with exactly what’s your need before you zero in to a vendor for purchasing a system that is not suitable to your business.

2. Select Right Vendor:

When you go online to search for the right CRM technology, you will be astonished to find that the market is inundated with options, making it tough to come to a conclusion. Take time to have a look from close quarters at each vendor to ensure you are making the right choice. Often the best CRM system for your enterprise may not be the top ranked or the most expensive CRM. Surprisingly the simplest CRM solution could be the most effective for you!

3. Know Customization Cost:

It’s somewhat difficult to find CRM solution that addresses all of your needs in a simple package. In many cases, the right amalgamation of features may not be available with the vendor and you may need to opt for customization options. Avoid falling into the trap of endless customization. Just ensure that your CRM is efficiently performed by your in house staff to avoid paying any outside staff to manage it when you need any report. Review customization options. Contact existing customers for better insight on overall price including customization.

4. Don’t Get Influenced Easily:

Stay grounded when selecting the right CRM. Every feature and variant may appear vital, but actually it’s not. After defining your needs, stick to your needs and don’t get carried away by the sea of features you are presented with. Same with implementation; you can bifurcate your implementation plans and never push everything out all at once. Implement the CRM solution slowly in a phase wise manner so that your business can get time to harmonize with the system change.

5. Stay within Budget:

Yes, being within budget is essential. There are CRM solutions that can easily meet any budgetary limits you may have. Usually the costs you will run into would be initial cost of the software including maintenance and integration charge. In many case you may end up finding options of per month subscription fee. Just ensure what works best for you in terms of expenses and payment options.

6. Homework before Implementation of CRM:

It may take a long time to get the new CRM application up and running. Migrating existing data into a new CRM system may be a tiring and time consuming task. It’s a great idea to clean up your existing data by deleting duplicate data and cleaning details of those people & companies who have left your enterprises. This will ward off any confusion and extra time to implement the new CRM system and sift through irrelevant data.

7. Employee Workflow:

After implementing your new CRM system, the earlier employee workflow would no longer work. The new system would require a transition to a new workflow for your employees. Better you know what the new workflows will be; this may include how to follow up with potential leads, etc. You need to hand out the training manuals and ensure that you are keeping track with the workflow for every employee. This is to ensure that your staff are aware of the all the necessary information they need to succeed.

8. Invest in Training:

As said earlier, training is necessary to implement a new CRM application in your company. Training to the end user is vital to ensure consistency of use. Just ensure you are also focusing for ongoing training as you develop your training modules. Continuous training is necessary to help all employees stay on the same page and keeping abreast with the functionality and feature updates of the CRM system.

9. Focus on the Client:

When you implement a new CRM, don’t forget focusing on your clients. You may get released by performing some iterative tasks but you cannot divert focus from your customers. After all the new system also is there to focus on your customers, so don’t get overwhelmed with it and don’t stop focusing on your clients and ensure you do not lose them.

10. Don’t Rely Blindly on Technology:

Unfortunately it is human effort that has to be put to use to make things work once CRM technology is implemented. Just having a CRM product with a collaboration forum or some other social CRM product cannot make things work automatically. You will have to initiate to put efforts into involving customers, building interactive portals, and offering feedback when required. Or else the data collected in your CRM will lose its essence.

11. Incorporate Social Media Leads:

Social media is becoming the most vital landscape in the business sector. Just do not forget to use your CRM system to ensure that it allows you to track leads from social media sites like Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter, etc. The same message must be conveyed to your team and all end users of the system.

12. Get Rid of Unwanted Features:

There might be certain features that do not fit into your business needs. Just identify these features and disable it all or you can also hide them from your screen. This will keep your CRM clean and clutter free. Take the time to ensure they are off your screen and it’ll be easier to navigate through the available modules. It’ll improve the functioning of your CRM application.

13. Evaluate Your ROI:

It’s necessary to track your ROI once you have implemented a CRM solution. Understand the procedure and strategy by building your goals to analyze the implementation of the CRM as software and also as strategy. You would be able to quantify the benefit of CRM application and you would also be able to understand how successful your business is post CRM implementation.

Just ensure you do not miss out to understand and implement all these aspects to get the optimum benefits of your new CRM system.