Bring Customers Back

Sid Raisch

Yes, it’s April, and you don’t have time to read this magazine—let alone, this article. While the days are growing longer, the list of things to do in them far exceeds the time available to do them. We’d better prioritize.

Note to people who are too busy to do what is too important not to do: If you won’t get around to reading this article until June or later, I’m sorry that you’ll miss the opportunity to coax customers back by demonstrating that you understand what it takes to get customers to come back. It’s never too late to start, if you’re still in business. If you are still in business, just do this to stay there.

Back to the priorities. Here’s one to consider: Get those customers coming in your door to come back. Getting customers into your business is one thing. Bringing them back is quite another. Is that why transaction counts are slipping in companies across America? You bet it is.

We take customers for granted all too often. Customers come to us and act happy, spending their money, and we just expect that they’ll come back. Don’t you wish they did?

The numbers show, on average, that customers just don’t come back nearly as often as we need them to. The majority of them are those “once a year whether they need to or not” type of customers. How can they live without us? Why can they live without us? Maybe they just aren’t that interested in us.

Plug The Customer Leak
While finding new customers is critical, there really is no point in doing so if they’ll be lost in the course of events following their acquisition. The churn of adding and losing customers is futile, expensive and out of control. Identifying the factors that cause customers to leave is the first step toward keeping our remaining clientele intact.

Consider the cost of customer acquisition. Divide the amount of your advertising by the number of new customers, and you’ll see we’ve spent a fortune to acquire each of them.

Typically we don’t measure such things; we just throw advertising money (and lots of it) at the problem of getting people through the door and “hope for the best.” Hope is a strategy, but it’s not meant to be used alone.

What we need is a powerful strategy and several tactics to keep customers from becoming disinterested, or preferably to keep them interested in what we have to offer.

Customer Interest Strategy #1:
Show Interest in the Customer

My colleague, Kevin Stinson, facilitates our Client Advantage Customer Culture program. By his observation, there are two things customers are NOT interested in. They are not interested in us nor our stuff. Yes, that contradicts what I just wrote in the paragraph above. Let’s see what Kevin has to say about that.

Kevin says that there’s good news—great news actually. He says there are also two things customers ARE interested in. They are interested in themselves and themselves. Wow, if they could just buy those two things from us, we’d really be in business!

Becoming more interested in our customer than we are in ourselves and our stuff is the first strategy to get customers interested in coming back—and may be the only strategy if done correctly.

Gee, that’s simple! But as usual, what is simple is not easy. The first thing that’s difficult about this is that we’re so completely wrapped up in ourselves and our stuff already—and we have no process to become interested in our customer, nor to get everyone in our company to become more interested in them, as well. We need some tactics to carry this out.

Showing Interest in the Customer Tactic #1: If you care about the customer, act like you care about the customer.

We do all sorts of things to create a great experience for our customers and hope that they appreciate them enough to come back. But did we actually do something so simple as to tell them verbally that we’re happy they came? Could we do something as simple as sincerely saying one simple word to them? What if we just said the word “Welcome!” with sincerity? I agree with you. That is super-simple. But remember, I warned you. What is simple is usually not easy. Try it for a day and see how you do. I bet you stop doing it by lunch. It’s okay if you do. You can start over.

Showing Interest in the Customer Tactic #2: See Customer Interest Tactic #1.

I’m convinced that if you can work hard enough to create a culture of customer appreciation, you’re on the road to having customers that become interested in you and your stuff because it’s how they show interest in themselves. Think about that for a moment. I mean, stop what you’re doing and really contemplate that. Customers show interest in themselves when they purchase something for their own self-interest. They don’t buy our stuff to show interest in us. They buy stuff to show interest in themselves.

The true measure of customer interest is their purchase. “No purchase” equals “no interest.” They buy to show interest in themselves, not to show interest in us or our stuff.

Customer Interest Strategy #2:
Stop Shooting Yourself in the Foot

What’s the point of showing a sincere interest in your customer if you turn around and shoot yourself in the foot by showing you don’t care about them in other ways?

The first impression customers get really is a lasting impression. Showing you don’t care about your customer and then acting like you do is going to appear phony. This is a sure-fire way to shoot yourself in the foot. Putting your “stuff” in the way of serving the customer is a common way to do this.

Take a look around, and keep an eye out for the following:

Is there room for the customer to park her or his beautiful car? Customers who care enough to take care of themselves generally take care of their stuff. Don’t expect them to park in a muddy field over in Timbuktu and be happy about it. Many of them just won’t come back if they think they will have to do that again.

Is there room for the customer to walk around and look at your stuff to see if any of it will help them show an interest in themselves? People can’t find something that shows they’re interested in themselves if they don’t see it. They can buy only what they can see. They may fight through a jungle or go where they fear they aren’t supposed to this time, but many of them will not come back to do that again.

Is there a cart with plenty of room to carry plenty of stuff? Most customers purchase only what they can carry or what fits in the biggest cart you have to lend them. They aren’t fooled a bit by your willingness to carry things for them. If they’re buying stuff to show their interest in themselves, they expect to carry it around with them. They’re actually proud of it because it’s theirs—not yours—once it’s in their arms or in their cart. Customers won’t come back if they think they’ll have to carry stuff, or to wait on someone else to carry it for them.

Many customers don’t know that we have plenty of parking, more space, and lots of carts to choose from outside of our peak days. You may not be able to add parking, widen aisles, or get shopping carts in time for your peak season this year. I just wanted you to be aware of these three reasons why many of the customers you spent all that advertising money on are not coming back.

Customer Interest Strategy #3:
Ricochet Marketing

If our customers don’t see a reason they could buy something for themselves from us in the future, there is no future—for us nor our stuff.

Many people mistakenly believe that loyalty programs actually create loyalty. Let’s just get real here. Loyalty is a feeling, not a program, even if it is called a loyalty program. Loyalty is certainly not the result of a loyalty program. Buying the future attention of our customer is just what it is. I call it a bribe. Let’s not get confused and believe that it means they are more interested in us or our stuff. Yes, they’ll be interested in saving money for themselves. This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t give them the opportunity to save their money. We should just call it what it is. They’re still interested in the same two things they always were interested in—themselves and themselves.

Customer Interest Strategy #4:
TOMA—Top-of-Mind Awareness

I just hate it when advertising salespeople ask, “Don’t you want to keep your name out there?” I hate it so much because I know they’re right, but I don’t want to buy ads from them just because they’re right. Do they care about what I care about? Do they care about me? Hmm. Nevertheless, staying present in the customers’ mind is necessary in order for them to think that we know they’re important enough to stay in touch with. More good news, great news, even: It’s becoming less expensive, although more time consuming to have TOMA with e-mail and social media. Time is money, and keeping TOMA is like money in the bank if we do it in the spirit of showing interest in the customer. As a result, they show interest in themselves by buying what shows they’re interested in themselves—which is our stuff.

It bears repeating: If our customers don’t see a reason they could buy something for themselves from us in the future, there is no future—not for us nor our stuff.

Time is money, and we have to put our time and interest in what the customer is interested in. We have to put it in them. Continue to show interest in your customers. We can’t afford not to. GP

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Sid Raisch is founder of Horticultural Advantage, a consulting firm to independent garden centers and service provider to The Garden Center Group. He has created the Advantage Development System to help companies increase effectiveness to earn greater profits. Sign up to learn more at www.AdvantageDevelopmentSystem.com.