An Untapped Gold Mine: Repeat Business

Most business people don't work their past customers at all. And those who do work their past customers produce only a fraction of the potential they're capable of producing.

Satisfied customers like to be, want to be and are already favorably predisposed toward working with you or doing business with you. They are simply silently begging to be led. By that, I mean they want to repurchase - they honestly do. But it's up to you to expend the effort, the energy and the necessary overture to lead the customer back. There's an infinite number of ways this can be accomplished. For example:

Offer your customers one-time, preferential pricing to induce them to do business with you again. Affinity is the goal. Look at everybody, including prospects, as if it is only a matter of time before you have a relationship in which your focus is to serve, benefit, enhance and create value for your customer for life, not limiting your involvement to the one area of your transactional involvement. After all, they are human beings with hopes, fears, problems and stress.

The more communication you have with your customer, the more trust is established, and the customer will do more clinically validated purchases. They will consider you a friend who cares, and will have a closer bonding and familiarity with you.

If you analyze the readers of weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, quarterly, semiannual, annual newsletters, you'll find that the weekly subscribers read them much more thoroughly and are much more closely bonded to the publication than the less frequent subscribers.

Do you think you don't have anything to say? Remember that you're dealing with people. Can you care about them, share ideas? You can talk about their families.

Let them know about what is new in the marketplace. Give them a chance to try things on a free trial or modified test basis. Alert them to what is coming from the new markets and give them a chance to pre-order. Doing things like this produces a lot more sales and business.

I obtained one client because he was very fascinatingly opinionated. He had views - great views - on topics from politics to farms to morality. He was so fascinating that every month I talked to him about anything, recorded him, and had it transcribed and turned into a letter, which was PS'ed with an offer. It turned into a profit center, and people loved him.
When was the last time you communicated personally with every one of your customers? You don't have time? You can have an articulate, highly professional assistant call everyone on your behalf just to say how much you appreciate them, and to share an idea you thought they might find valuable.

The more frequently you communicate from the heart about their interests - not yours - the greater the connection. You can also take your own interest in something, and ask yourself, "What about this is really their interest? How can I make this a benefit to them?" Communicate that you care a little more about them than just about their checkbook.

So communicate frequently by calling, writing, sending gifts such as booklets, reports, tapes even little notes and newspaper articles about all kinds of issues you know to be important to both their business and human side.