Relationship Selling

Archive for the ‘Creating Customer Value’ Category

How Do you Sustain and Grow your Customer Relationships?

The most important thing in sales and marketing is to attract and retain your most profitable business customers. In order to accomplish this feat, you must devise and implement a customer strategy that builds, fosters, nurtures and extends relationships with your customers. Your company profits only when the earnings from retained customers exceed the costs to acquire and to service customers over time.

There is a strong correlation between long-term business success and long-term customer relationships. Successful businesses capitalize on every stage of the customer life cycle—from customer selection, to customer acquisition, customer retention, and customer growth. Once a certain level of trust and comfort has been established, most customers prefer to remain loyal to companies and their products.

Customer selection and acquisition is just the beginning of the customer relationship life cycle. Ideally, your company should target only high value and low attrition-risk prospects. The cost to acquire a new customer is much greater than the cost to retain an existing customer. Depending on the industry, experts indicate that it is five to ten times more costly to acquire a new customer than it is to keep and develop an existing customer.

In the retention stage of the customer’s life cycle, a company retains its customers by delivering on its value proposition. This ensures that the customer needs to look no further; that is the rationale for providing the highest-quality of service. When your customer relationship is based on trust, cooperation and collaboration, the customer is more willing to listen to your new ideas, try your new products/ services, and considers you as a long term, trusted partner.

A savvy business owner/executive understands that it pays to nurture existing customer relationships. If a good working relationship has been established, then it is easier to up-sell and cross-sell your products/services to this existing customer. If your customer’s business is growing, there is a good possibility that there will be an increased need for your products/services.

In the growth stage of the customer’s life cycle, increasing the value of each existing customer is the ultimate objective. Many organizations think in terms of the “lifetime value” of a customer. Customer growth strategies generally focus on increasing the share of each customer’s expenditures by expanding its company’s range of products/services.

It is crucial, however, not to lose sight of the importance of continually acquiring new customers. In other words, if your company becomes too dependent on any one or only a few existing customers, then the future growth of your company could be in jeopardy. So, be cautious that the growth in purchases by, one or a few customers does not represent too large of a proportion of your company’s total sales. Striking this balance, between servicing existing customers and acquiring new customers, is imperative.

Creating and managing this balance can be a major challenge to management. However, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) applications offer solutions to this challenge. CRM is the process of tracking and managing all aspects of a company’s interaction with its customers, including prospecting, sales, and service.

Here are just a few customer touch points that you can use to strengthen your relationships and keep your customers informed and engaged:

• Email messages, newsletters, and surveys: Provide product/service updates, promote goods and services, and communicate news/events.

• Feedback: Ask for, capture, and act on your customer’s input.

• Insight: Research your customers’ markets, strategies, and goals.

• Customer loyalty: Implement loyalty, affinity, and rewards programs.

• Relationship building: Talk and listen to customers in order to maintain a dialogue and to build a trust based relationship.

• Be accessible: Make it easy for customers to reach you.

• Customer satisfaction: Implement a customer satisfaction policy that provides a way to resolve/remedy problems and issues.

• Involvement: Engage customers in product development /enhancement, via beta tests, focus groups, and pilots.

• Anticipate customer needs: Learn their business, their purchasing patterns, and their requirements for effective proactive solutions.

• Become an indispensable resource: Look for ways to add value, to be a real partner, and to help your customers achieve results.

• Help lines: Provide support, service, advice, and information.

In building customer relationships, remember to value the “personal touch.” Make an effort to get to know your customer “as a person.” You will be surprised at how much you may have in common. Establishing personal bonds goes a long way toward building lasting relationships.

Your efforts will be rewarded with repeat business, referrals, and satisfied, loyal customers.

About the Author

An author, speaker, and consultant, Terry H. Hill is the founder and managing partner of Legacy Associates, Inc., a business consulting and advisory services firm based in Sarasota, Florida. A veteran chief executive, Terry works directly with business owners of privately held companies on the issues and challenges that they face in each stage of their business life cycle. Terry is the author of the business desk-reference book, How to Jump Start Your Business. He hosts the Business Insights from Legacy Blog at http://blog.legacyai.com and writes a bi-monthly eNewsletter, “Business Insights from Legacy eZine.”

By signing up for Business Insights from Legacy eZine at http://tinyurl.com/2t4fxs you can keep abreast of the latest tips, tactics, and best business practices. You will, also, receive the free eBook, Jump Start Your Knowledge of Business.

Contact Terry by email at http://www.legacyai.com or telephone him at 941-556-1299.

Pragmatic CRM

If your using a prepaid card to shop online do you write…..?

On the field that says “NAME AS IT APPEARS ON CARD” do you write the name the prepaid card is registered under or what it actually says “VALUED CUSTOMER”??????

It doesn’t matter what name you put for an order placed with a gift/debit card. Any name will work.

Lifetime value of a customer

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Marketing Creating Value for Customers This is the 1998 9 tape video set that is ancillary to the 1997 book. Churchill and Peter are two of the most respected educators and researchers in the marketing discipline. Their content has a strong theme of customer value, and offers coverage of the most current topics: relationship marketing, technology, IMC, global marketing, services, and small businesses (through extensive examples). This …

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Principles of Marketing (13th Edition) $123.93 Today’s marketing challenge is creating vibrant, interactive communities of consumers who make products and brands a part of their daily lives. Learn how to create value and gain loyal customers. Kotler/Armstrong is a comprehensive, classic principles text organized around an innovative customer-value framework. Students learn how to create customer value, target the correct market, and bui…

I know they say that their prices are “no haggle,” but do they EVER come down on their prices for a customer? I found a car at Carmax that I really like, but it’s priced around $4,000 more than the Edmund’s “true retail value.” I’d love to buy the car, but I feel like I might be able to find a better deal somewhere else.

That is not the way they do business.

Coach

MKF1120 – Customer Value

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Creating Customer Value: The Essentials of Marketing (The Wharton Management Development Series) How does a company successfully challenge an industry leader for market share, turn around a negative public perception, or secure a niche in a crowded and competitive marketplace? In this program, Barbara Kahn, a professor of marketing at Wharton and an authority on consumer behavior, analyzes the marketing plans of Visa International, the Bank of Boston, and RYKÄ with their senior executives wh…

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Don’t you SEE “wall street” has created this “so called” problem??

The last time they “created” a LOW VALUE dollar,,the Japanese jumped in an BOUGHT everything in the 90′s,,few years later we were BUYING EVERYTHING BACK for pennies on the DOLLAR. Like “TRUMP” said THEY LOST THEIR AS—-. and went limping home.

That’s way to complicated for most Joe Twelve Packs to understand, also, most people can’t remember the “dot com” crisis, let alone the 80s and early 90s. But good point, I was just thinking this yesterday.

CEU Business School: Value Creating Government in the Post-Crisis Eastern Europe

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Creating Public Value: Strategic Management in Government $21.09 A seminal figure in the field of public management, Mark Moore presents his summation of fifteen years of research, observation, and teaching about what public sector executives should do to improve the performance of public enterprises. Useful for both practicing public executives and those who teach them, this book explicates some of the richest of several hundred cases used at Harvard’s Kenne…

The Best Scents Selling Today

One of the most popular is Cavin Klein’s Eau de Parfum Spray, coming in the 3.4 ounce bottle. The bottle itself is a striking piece of art, as it is sort of an arched shape bottle with a sleek rectangular lid that stands like a small corporate building. Lavender in color, the perfume is a wonderful blend of flowers and a sort of an herbal mix so that it offers a very modern and fresh scent, one that is perfect for casual wear and formal wear as it retains properties that would work well for just a day at work or school but also is elegant enough to wear if you are going to a party or some other fancy event as it is richly imbued with a strong floral scent, as well. Fitting the name well, this perfume inspires a sense of absolute bliss and will be sure to get the admiration of others as they breathe you in when you walk by.

Another fun and flirty scent is Lolita Lempicka by Lolita Lempicka. This vintage bottle comes in an apple shape with nice sage accents and is an elegant and adorable 3.3 ounce perfume spray. The scent is unbelievable fresh and flirty and a lot of fun. It is the perfect scent to wear all the time as it can quickly become one’s signature scent. With its easy to store shape, you can take it with you wherever you, as well. More sweet and almost candy like than flowery, it has more of a fruity sense to it, a sweetness that will please you if you like to smell sweet and candied. For those who adore all that is romantic and feminine, this is the perfect scent for you.

Another beloved scent is Fantasy by Britney Spears, a 3.3 ounce pink bottle studded with diamond studs and an elegant and feminine cap. This scent is strong and floral and highly feminine as it is sort of a mix between flowery and sweet and also intensely strong so you can use it for a long time as you only need a little at a time. For a fun, flirty time, this Fantasy perfume is exactly what you need to get the sparks flying and to turn heads as you lean in for a quick kiss or an embrace. Another popular celebrity inspired perfume is Lovely by Sarah Jessica Parker, a 3.4 ounce bottle that is soft and pink and true to its name as it combines the gentle scents of flower and herbs and creates a truly feminine scent that you will adore.

This scent is gentler and might be great for women of all ages who adore something that is feminine and subtle. For something more outgoing and loud, Paris Hilton by Paris Hilton is preferable as it comes in a modish bottle and has a sharp and youthful scent that is marked with a strong emphasis on flowers and vigorous scent. Contrarily, Romance by Ralph Lauren is far more sophisticated and elegant as the scent is subtle and gentle but entirely feminine.

About the Author

Roberto Sedycias works as an IT consultant for http://www.polomercantil.com.br/

“What’s Personfly18 Selling Today!” Episode 1

Sm Selling Today Intelecom Vid [VHS] …

Selling Today: Building Quality Partnrships Instructors Video [VHS] …

Sm Selling Today Act Vid [VHS] …

Selling Today (11th Edition) $58.50 Students heading for a career in business will benefit from researched and proven selling techniques. Professional sales skills are becoming increasingly important in today’s business world. This text covers up-to-date academic topics and rich application materials, providing students with everything they need to understand and apply selling techniques. In the eleventh edition, Manning an…

Selling Today (12th Edition) $119.80 Extensive, real-world applications, carefully integrated with current personal selling concepts. Selling Today: Partnering to Create Value helps readers understand the value of developing their personal selling skills by exposing them to a careful integration of personal selling academic theory and real-world applications. And with the largest number of “learn by doing” materials ava…

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Google Map Mashup Help! OnSubmit not working?

Try Live Maps/Virtual Earth instead. Coding for that is far easier than what Google has.

http://maps.live.com/

http://www.microsoft.com/virtualearth/

http://virtualearth.spaces.live.com/blog/