Are Your Customers Asking You to Pay?
What about play again and again?
After you have gone through the hard work to acquire a customer the hope is that they ask you to come back and play again and again. After all it is about 5 times more expensive to acquire a new customer.
To the point of Dr. Jordan Peterson’s quote, the companies, big or small, that find consistent success are asked to come back and solve their customers problems, over and over again. This leads to more consistent revenue for customers, and higher Net Promoter Scores. Which is a measure of how likely your customers are to refer you to others. As you are going down your sales journey as a small business make sure you track how often you are being asked back to play again. Even in very transactional business this can be very helpful. Do your customers need service or support? Are they happy about it or not? What changes could you make for the next customer to improve that experience. This is another great place to use your active listening that we have talked about before. When you listen to the customers feedback they will tell you how you can be invited back to play again. That could be with the same product, or with a new product or service. Do not get hung up on the metric, but know how often you are getting asked to play again. Review that metrics 1-3 times a year. If you see it trending up or down, review changes you have made recently and reflect on feedback from your customers.
As you reflect on this metric and your customer feedback the big question you should be considering is:
“What can you do better to get asked to play again more often?”
Remember getting asked to play again more often means better margins, after all these sales will cost you ~5 times less than going out and getting a new customer. The more often customers invite you back to play, the more likely they are to recommend you to a friend or colleague. So if you have a long sales cycle, one way to track your invitations to play again would be to have some kind of referral system. If a customer can not buy your product or service directly the next best thing they can do is recommend you to someone else. Make sure that you have a way of knowing if a new sale is a referral. That could be important because you want to reward the refer. But it is also an important part of knowing you have been invited to play again. Your customers want to brag about using you and recommend you to someone. It is human nature to be part of the solution for someone else, even if that part is just a recommendation of a new product or service. So make the process smooth and simple for your customers and make sure they are inviting you to play again.
Remember:
Getting invited to play again leads to cheaper sales in the future.
Track how often you are being invited to play again, but do not get hung up on the metric.
Customers want to recommend you to someone else, make it easy for them to refer your company.
I hope you enjoyed this post and found at least a nugget of useful information or inspiration. If you did all I ask is that you share it with a friend.