It seems like all the glamour and all the excitement in sales and marketing focuses on account acquisition. Everyone loves the “Rainmaker”, the professional who reels in the big fish and headliner new clients. We spend our time, our resources, our money on carefully crafted marketing plans. We think through objectives, strategies, tactics. We look for ways to grab their attention, get their interest, research their markets, and create messaging around what we perceive to be their greatest needs. And if we do it right, we can make a good living with the batting average of a mediocre baseball player. And don’t get me wrong, having a pipeline of prospects and new business coming in is vital for every business.
New business development is vital because accounts do leave, get acquired, go out of business, change management, change direction, right-size, wrong-size, dumb-size, and for all kinds of reasons evaporate. New business is critical for company morale, for growth, even for innovation and creativity.
But.
What about having a Retention Strategy? Do you put together a formal Customer Retention Strategy? Your most profitable business comes from the customers you already have. Your most potential comes from penetrating existing accounts deeper and broader. You can add more value when you have relationship and communication that allows you to innovate new solutions, create improvements to process, and customize your offerings to the needs of your current accounts. And often times this is the low hanging fruit. Do your clients view you as a part of their team? Do they see your daily commitment to providing solutions and creating efficiencies for them? Do they measure your value on something other than price?
Why do companies have people with the title, Director of New Business Development — but we never see Director of Client Retention? You need to do this and you can also help your clients develop retention strategies. Opportunity Knocks.
Paul Kiewiet MAS+ is an industry speaker, writer, consultant and coach. He serves as the executive director of MiPPA. Kiewiet was inducted into the PPAI Hall of Fame and the MiPPA Hall of Fame. He served as Chairman of PPAI in 2007. A former distributor, he founded Promotion Concepts, Inc in 1982 and worked with some of America’s most valuable brands including Coca-Cola, Kelloggs, and Whirlpool.