What are the best ways to retain customers after closing a deal?

The key to client retention starts before the sale not after a sale. Before starting any engagement with a client you have to understand what their goals are and how your organization can achieve those goals. You have to be disciplined enough that if you feel you can't reliable achieve the goals your prospect has for your product or service to be honest in your assessment and not move forward with the sales process. In the end, the clients who are not a good fit will end up taking up more of your valuable time that could be used focusing on your right fit clients and increasing retention. So taking on the right clients and then delivering on their goals leads to high client retention.

"Deliver on Promises: Be Reliable, Not a Politician" Stay Loyal and Honest: It's about making promises and consistently delivering on them. If you say you'll do something, ensure it gets done. This reliability is a strong foundation for trust and loyalty. Remember, you're not a politician; you're a business that thrives on the trust and satisfaction of your customers. "Fostering Customer-Centric Relationships: A Holistic Commitment to Satisfaction" In essence, it's about a continuous dedication to your customers' needs and satisfaction, fostering loyalty and trust by exceeding their expectations.

We need to keep this in mind that if our product is adding value as expected the customer's business will grow and with growth comes new requirements. So we have to be ahead of the curve and continue to bring incremental improvements in our feature set. This will allow the customers to stick to the product without looking for alternatives aggressively.

"Listen, Personalize, Resolve: Your Path to Exceptional Customer Care." Actively seek feedback from your customers. LISTEN truly LISTEN without AGENDA) to their concerns, suggestions, and opinions. Use this information to improve your products or services and show that you value their input. Tailor your interactions and offerings to individual customers' specific needs and preferences. Personalisation shows that you understand and care about them as unique individuals. When issues or complaints arise, address them promptly and professionally. How you handle problems can have a significant impact on customer retention.

Having a connection with the customer is very important, be it high touch or tech touch but it should allow customers to surface their opinion, challenges and new requirements. Use that to plan the future of your product and inform the customers which if things are in the pipeline.

This is where partner-focused plays can work really well. If you don't have anything to upsell, or it is too soon; work with your partners to make some valuable introductions that you think would help them solve a problem based on what you know about them so far. "We are helping you with XYZ, but I wanted to introduce you to Tom over at ABC Co. He is running a really solid business and is personally helping us with such and such. If you guys need help with XYZ in the future you should definitely keep him in your back pocket."

Just having a PROCESS for what happens after a customer buys or goes live is important. If your service is expensive enough to justify a support team or customer success team, create a 30/60/90 day review process. On day 1, schedule your 30 day review and commit to reviewing how things have been going so far. Bonus points if you can compare their prior results to their first month of results. Keeping in touch those first 3 months more than normal can help you stay top-of-mind for your new customers and make them feel confident sharing any negative experiences they are having - which you then have a chance to fix.