We must wake up to the fact that going the extra mile for our clients may simply not be enough to keep them loyal over the long-term. Business strategy research has shown that you need a 4 pronged approach to help you to achieve this.
Did you know that if you have a client who you only ever offer one service to, that statistically you only have a 50% chance of them remaining loyal to your business? The client may have attended your business for years, and it’s so easy to be complacent thinking the client is yours for life, but in todays climate where choice and variety is in abundance, if you don’t introduce them to other services then you have a very good chance of losing them, and perhaps sooner than you think.
It’s time to take action.
1. Change a client’s perception and get them to try an additional service, or to buy a retail product they love, and the loyalty likelihood changes to 70%. Introducing yet another service increases that figure to 85%, before optimising at a 95% chance of clientele loyalty if they have interacted in 4 different ways with your business. This doesn’t just apply to our industry. Notice when you go shopping, just how many services the larger businesses are now providing including banks, supermarkets and high street stores.
Long gone are the days when the Post Office only sold stamps. They now offer so many options to build loyalty and interact with you. Post office services now include credit cards, home and life insurance, stationary, passport photo booths, lottery tickets, foreign exchange; cash withdrawal… the list just goes on and on! We need to follow the lead of big businesses and make sure we’re keeping our existing clients loyal to us, then we won’t need to be constantly chasing new ones. This strategy is so simple, yet effective!
It’s so easy to presume that a client only wants the service or product they’ve booked and/or purchased, but WE are the experts, and it’s our duty to keep our clients up to date with our new, as well as existing services and products that would be of benefit to them.
Here’s how you can do this easily:
Breakdown the time you spend with a client into segments. Make the conversation with your client more about them than about you by encouraging them to talk about themselves. Use this as your valuable listening time, and from this, you need to assess and retrieve information on what the client needs and wants. Approximately 10% of your time with them should be used to advise on suitable products and treatments, events and special offers you know would help them.
2. You should never need to sell to a client. Instead make sure you are so knowledgeable that the client will trust you implicitly to try new things encouraged by your enthusiasm and professionalism.
3. List all of the ways you can get a client to engage with your business. Do you encourage clients to buy gift vouchers? Can you offer online booking? Do you blog and send out newsletters? How about competitions and prize draws?
4. Instead of discounting, add value by combining treatments and products into special price packages. If a client normally only has a nail service then try to include a treatment which involves lying on a treatment couch, or utilising a different treatment area of your premises to widen the client’s perspective of your business and ensuring you utilize their loyalty in the Power of 4.
