The single most important initiative to growth is to protect your base by retaining and growing your client relationships.
1. Survey your clients.
Loyal customers enhance your ability to create more cooperative or collaborative relationships. One of the best measurements of the customer experience is conducting a Net Promoter Score (NPS®) survey. Those customers that rate you high on the scale are your most loyal and will steer you in the direction of expanded and new business opportunities. Important note: 60-80 percent of customer defectors scored themselves as "satisfied" or "very satisfied" on satisfaction surveys preceding their defection, thus the case for loyalty.
2. Recognize leading indicators.
Effectively managing your client relationships means that you have specific insight to ensure you are aware of and can address the concerns of your customers before they become a real problem. Establish a client awareness initiative within your organization. Educate your team that it's everyone’s job to make sure each client interaction contributes positively to your brand.
3. Establish a distributor-wide discipline.
All too often, the phrase "key account management" is not backed by a disciplined, "this is how we do things around here" program. As your company's leader, it is incumbent on you to set the standard. You must implement and maintain your distributors' approach to advancing relationships. Apply a best practice planning template to create collaborative relationships with your client. Work with your team to continuously create value for your client through weekly initiatives. Have a deeper understanding of your customer by tracking, measuring and improving results and continuing to align your goals and solutions with your customer.
Read the whole article in the January 2016 issue of PS Magazine.
