Q2 Planning - Why Smart CEO's and Business Owners Are Focusing on Their Existing Clients

Business development and client acquisition is the ongoing topic of almost every business conversation I have these days, not to mention posts, invitations to attend webinars and trainings, and books.??This is ?a very important conversation as businesses compete to earn more business. I have certainly invested many hours (as in thousands, maybe even 10,000) and dollars (again, thousands, and certainly well over $10,000) in business development for my businesses over the decades.

And yet,?the missing conversation I am not hearing or reading much about is the one about existing clients; how to ?keep them, provide a great experience,?and continue to earn their trust.

We seem to have an elephant in the room, so I'm going to share why it's important to balance new client acquisition AND client experience. Personally, this is top of mind for me right now after having had a mixed bag of experiences recently as a consumer; it's fascinating how many additional shopping experiences one has when building a new home. In doing so, I like to think of myself as a discerning consumer, rather than a demanding one. I enjoy observing my own experience as a consumer and often get curious about what thought was put into it by the business I'm dealing with.

Going back to my insurance brokerage ownership dates, the number one metric I paid attention to as CEO every month was our client retention rate. In other words, how many clients had renewed their insurance with us.

While we always wanted to serve more clients, it was the existing clients I was most interested in keeping as long term clients.

Long term clients can be the foundation of success for any business.

Here’s why;

1.?????Because they keep coming back to your business on a recurring basis, long term clients are essentially automatically depositing money to your bank account – recurring revenue is always good for a business bottom line.

2.?????Long term clients tend to value a business more – putting trust, being tolerant of mistakes, and treating your team members professionally. As a result, lower stress levels for all concerned.

3.?????They are often willing to refer their friends, family, and colleagues to your business, especially if you have a great strategy to encourage referrals.

4.?????Long term clients are a known entity by your team, meaning your team can deliver on the expected service levels because of their experience in working your client. More power to you if you specialize in a particular niche and can train your team on the wants, needs, and desires of your client base as a whole.

In our insurance brokering business, ?my partner and I we were always proud to share our client retention rates, which were well above industry norms. ?It was a bit of an inside joke, our clients only went to the competition if they moved to an area where our business could not service our client any longer – though I would gladly have gotten my insurance license in an exotic location like Fiji – if only I had been asked…..

Anyhoo, over the years, we had thousands of long terms clients – I remember working with some of them when I first got my insurance license in my late teens, and as my clients lives grew and evolved, so did mine. I always had a skill for picking up the phone and hearing “Hello” and knowing who I was speaking to before they even said their name (this was way before phone systems would tell you who was calling).

Here are some of the strategies we utilized for long term client relationships.

·????????Birthday calls and emails, with the intent to always be the first to wish clients a happy birthday

·????????Hand written thank you cards that I personally signed to thank clients for continuing our relationship

·????????Being part of our clients' professional community by attending and sponsoring various events and volunteering our time to help out (not kidding, despite being in the risk management business, my husband would jump on ladders to help put up signage if a corporate client needed an extra set of hands).

·????????Keeping our core values top of mind in our business, which engendered more trust with clients. When we did make mistakes or dropped a ball, our clients as a whole tended to be very forgiving.

·????????Acting as a trusted advisor – even if it meant advising a client to deal with a competitor because it was the right thing to do

·????????Being known as the expert in their profession/industry by focusing on niches where we had expertise, and saying no for anything outside of our expertise or bandwidth.

·????????Working hard to bring clients back if we did lose their business due to a service or pricing issue

·????????Setting the tone for our client experience by answering our calls with “how can we make this the best call of your day today?”. While a few naysayers said it sounded a bit hokey, most of our clients were pleasantly surprised with how the greeting set the tone for their call.

·????????Having team meetings in which we asked our team to score our service levels, followed up with “and how can we further improve?”

·????????Monthly client newsletters that kept our clients up to date about changes in insurance, our business, team, and how we could better serve their needs.

You might be thinking some of these are costly, and truthfully initially my partner and I initially balked at some of them, especially given that we were working on a discounted revenue model where our clients received hefty discounts AND we were also paid discounted commissions. But, our financial model made us decide to be more resourceful, and caused extra motivation to keep relationships in place over the long term. We had to strap on our seatbelts, take a leap of faith, and lean into our core values.

Bottom line, these tactics paid off as we achieved our goal of long term clients that was important to our business success, and made our business more valuable when it was time to sell.

If you are a business owner or executive reviewing your business vision and plan at the end of Q1 2023, I highly encourage an in-depth review of client experience. In my experience, balancing priorities will pay off.

Maybe you'll even make the trip to Fiji that's still on my bucket list.