Improving Communications with Your Customers While Creating Sustainable ProfitsWritten by Justin Hitt, Strategic Relations Consultant, http://www.justinhitt.com/
If there were just one magic word you could use to double your profits, Wouldn’t you use it? It seems there is something, not a word, but something you do with words that can do just that. Its communications, and these lessons learned can improve your company’s bottom line.Ask your customers where you can serve them better. Seek to improve from their feedback, strive to serve them better, but do not ask what you do wrong -- it could overshadow your accomplishments. Ask your best customers for more business. In effect, ask for referrals, check on reorders to keep you customer supplied, and do other things to keep customer coming back for more with top-of-mind consideration. Personally thank your top 10 customers. A personal face-to-face thank you means more than anything to keeping customers coming back, however, do not make it a sales call – truly be thankful and treat customer without underlying motives.
| | How to Increase Your Profits by Cultivating Your ‘Top Ten Percent’Written by Justin Hitt, Strategic Relations Consultant, http://www.justinhitt.com/
Not all customers have equal value to your organization; in fact, some customers are more profitable than others are. These profits come from cost of service and total purchasing volume, not just individual product profitability. To cultivate these profitable customers, you first must identify them in your customer portfolio.Your ‘Top Ten Percent’ customers are at top of your ranking for volume, frequency, and profits per dollar invested. Group your customers by profits generated for your company, organizing them by ‘Top Ten Percent’, those ‘Above Average’, and customers with ‘Below Average’ profit earnings. Utilize statistical information and remember customers purchase multiple products, so do not use products as only measure of profitability. Try to develop a full picture of each customer’s contribution and expense to your organization, consider overhead costs as well as other expenses on a per customer basis. It is important to align your profitability measures with your corporate goals and always use measurable information – don’t just guess! Once you have arranged your customers by their profitability to your organization and have grouped them in three groups mentioned above – you will get most out of this strategy by determine specific demographic differences between categories. Each customer tier will have specific demographic, preferences, and product expectations unique to that group. This analysis helps you better understand differences between your customers, which enables you to serve their needs. It may be necessary to append your historical sales information with customer demographics from third party data in order to get a clearer picture of who your customers are in each category. If differences are not apparent, then revisit this segmentation process and refine your profit measures.
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