How To Build Rock-Solid Customer Loyalty - Increase Upsells & Cross-sells

How To Build Rock-Solid Customer Loyalty

Small B2B businesses do a poor job of establishing customer loyalty and when you look at the 2017 stats you can understand why. Only 29% of your B2B customers are engaged (Gallup). Why is that important? Because B2B businesses with high customer engagement scores achieve 50% higher revenue/sales, 34% higher profitability, and 55% higher share of the market (Gallup). 

I’ve worked for and with many B2B businesses over the years and the focus for most small businesses is on bringing in new customers. Small businesses have informed me it costs anywhere from 2.5K to 35k to bring on a new customer. It need not be that high and I'm working on another article that addresses how to reduce the high cost of new customers. However, let's get back to bringing in new customers. New customers are essential to your business’s sustainability, but where most Small Businesses get it wrong is AFTER the sale. 

They stop engaging the customer proactively and most communication happens after a problem occurs and they contact you, or they are late on a payment so you contact them. Not a great way to bring value to the customer. I’m fully aware most businesses have account managers that reach out to the customers, but what value do they bring to the customer overall? Well, the stats above tell us. I address this part in more detail in my MasterClass with three case studies.

How To Build Rock-Solid Customer Loyalty - Three Feet From Gold

Let me create a vivid picture of what the typical customer relationship looks like and to do this I’m going back to the gold rush days. Stick with me as I have a point which will become clear shortly. A man by the name of RU Darby and his uncle traveled west to Colorado during the Gold Rush to strike it rich. They purchased their equipment, claimed their land, and began to mine for gold. Before long, they hit gold! Everyone around them was excited with “gold fever”. So much so that many invested in the efforts of RU Darby and his uncle. They purchased more equipment, hired more labor and spent every waking hour mining for gold. But it wasn’t long before the gold disappeared. That didn’t dissuade them as they continued their efforts day after day, week after week, and month after month until they ran out of their money as well as the money that others had invested. They did the only rational thing. They sold their equipment and land for pennies on the dollar to a resourceful junk dealer. The junk dealer surrounded himself with people who knew and understood mines. One engineer determined that RU Darby and his uncle were just three feet from Gold. That extra knowledge made that junk dealer a very rich man.

Three Feet From Gold - How to Build Rock-Solid Customer Loyalty

Small Businesses get that gold nugget when they bring on a customer, but they stop three feet from gold because they spend most of their efforts on behaviors that don’t engage the customer in a way that builds a Rock-Solid Loyal relationship. Remember - Only 29% of your B2B customers are engaged (Gallup). BTW - Those customers find someone else to be their vendor of choice. Stop the crazy cycle and tap into your true potential by developing your relationships with your customers in a way that’s real, sincere, and they see the value in what you do. You’re never going to upsell and cross-sell your customer if they aren’t mouthing how great you are. That’s right, it has to come from their mouths, but how does that happen? Well, it isn’t magic. It does take a well thought out strategy built on the service you provide to your customers. Think about it this way. How can you track the services for your customers in the way of a grade card? Let me give you a hint… Example: Technology companies have access to service tickets turnaround times, reducing the number of service tickets, and overall uptime or downtime. What do you think the customer would say if you had a record/grade card showing them how you reduced turnaround time on service tickets by 49%, and reduced the number of service tickets by 51%, but most importantly, eliminated 33% (7 hours a month) of the downtime on their network which increased productivity _________. Do you think those numbers would speak volumes? Well, you might think so, but the problem is most don’t understand the strategy on how to review these numbers and that’s the key. I’ve worked with every industry imaginable and every business has a way to grade their performance. When you provide great service and use the correct strategy to review real numbers that positively affect your customers' performance, you build Rock-Solid Loyal Customer relationships which will naturally lead to Upsells and Cross-sells. It's simple and it works well, but it takes time to build your score care/grade card correctly.

How to Build Rock-Solid Customer Loyalty

There are many details in setting this up and it may seem a little unclear right now and that's why I’ve included 3 case studies in my MasterClass and one of them describes how exactly to build Rock-Solid Loyal Customer relationships which will naturally lead to Upsells and Cross-sells. History has shown it to increase sales a minimum of 39% with current customers alone. Here’s the link to the MasterClass - howtobuildcustomerloyalty.com