TRANSCRIPT: 

00:04

Hello, welcome to the sales show. I'm Maree Kirkpatrick, your sales and business strategist. I'm a mom, a wife, and a multi-business owner myself. With over 15 years of experience in sales and business, I have worked with startups all the way through to multimillion-dollar companies. I've seen the good, the bad, and the ugly. I love helping service-based businesses make an income as well as an impact. 

00:30

Let's jump into talking about all things sales and business. Hello, I'm your host, Maree Kirkpatrick, and welcome to the sales show, where we dive into the deep world of sales strategies, tips, and techniques to help you create more impact as well as more income. Now today, we're tackling the topic of how to retain sustain, and thrive, essential retention strategies, and how to keep your clients coming back, which for me, is a crucial part of business, right, we don't want to always be just focusing on closing the deal or making the sale. It's about creating that relationship. And it's about keeping our clients coming back for more over and over and over again, and giving them such a great experience. It's kind of like when you go out with someone, whether that's a friend or a partner that you're looking to date long term, you want to make sure that every time you go out, you have such a great time that you want to go back for more, you want to go and have more experiences together. Because you know, it'll be fun, you know, it'd be a great time and you know, the quality of the experience you're gonna have.

01:35

 So I want you to buckle in, because today, I want to explore the strategies that not only will help you retain these clients, but also help your business sustain and thrive. And to really grow based on keeping that retention of clients high. I was having this conversation with a new inquiry recently, who had new inquiries coming through, which wasn't a bad thing. But the quality of those new inquiries was quite low, they weren't looking at spending the money that is worthwhile to work with her. They weren't necessarily looking for the Holy experience. So we're just really focused on the budget. And what she was saying to me was, in the past, my clients were worth 10s of 1000s of dollars. And now they're worth maybe five or $600. 

02:22

So we're not making any profit, and we are actually running the business at a loss. And I said to her, what sort of strategies have you got in place to bring back clients to keep them coming back for more? What are you doing to nurture them? What are you doing to look after them? And her answer was that she didn't have a strategy around it, which I seen a lot of businesses, right, it's not the worst thing in the world. But if we can implement a strategy to bring in our past clients, to look at clients or inquiries that have inquired, or leads that have inquired with us before, but haven't necessarily bought from us, or maybe we've dropped the ball somewhere, or maybe they haven't gotten back to us. And we're just kind of let it go. We want to have strategies to revitalize these leads in these inquiries and to look after and nurture our past clients so that we're always front of mind. And we're always looking for ways that we can serve them. Because the more people that we can serve, the more our business will grow.

03:14

 So I want to do this podcast today on the strategies that we worked through together, I gave her a few tips and advice on what she can do to move forward. Now I know if you've been in business for a little while, you may have heard the saying it's easier and more cost-effective to keep existing clients and to acquire new ones. There was an analogy that I saw many, many years ago about hunting versus farming. And so hunting is always going out and looking for more leads and looking for new opportunities. In your inquiries, where farming is looking after the people that have worked with you inquired with you before, and you really nurture and grow your business. Through that, I like to have a combination of both. I hate seeing companies that just focus on new clients, and they don't look after their current clients.

04:00

 This can be quite familiar in the banking industry, where if you take out a new loan, you get a better rate than what the current and existing clients get. And I don't know about you. But that really frustrates the living bejesus out of me, it's like, you're not looking after me. You're not encouraging me to be loyal with your brand or with your company. And so I highly recommend to my clients that you're not one of those brands, you want to make sure that you're constantly looking after the people that help your business grow and thrive. It's not only about building those lasting relationships, but it's also about making the effort to understand your clients at each stage of their business too. So if you work with a client, and you've ticked off one box, and they're ready for the next stage, how can you help them with that next stage? Or if you're an events company, maybe they may run one event with you, but how do you keep them coming back for all the next events that you have coming up? Or how do you keep clients coming back for new loans or new strategies or new whatever it is that they're up-leveling? 

05:00

So even if you're a product-based business, and they're like, Okay, currently got this handbag, and I'm looking for the next handbag, how can we keep our clients coming back to us, because that will not only save us time, money and energy but also give them a really great buying experience. So you want to create that exceptional service, you want to make sure you're understanding your clients, you want to understand that you're meeting their needs and that you're creating that bond that goes beyond a single transaction. And so I want to delve into client retention and why it's should be part of your core sales strategy. Now, one part of that sales strategy with client retention should be looking at your loss leads. 

05:40

Now you may be thinking, great, how do I look after my loss leads? Or Marie, what even is a frickin loss lead? I'm so glad you asked. So a loss lady, someone that has inquired with our business previously, maybe they filled in a form on our website, maybe we have sent through a proposal or a pitch deck, or they have just some form of inquiring that they've reached out and you've got their contact details. Now loss leads can go many different ways. They can be someone that has inquired, and you have sent through proposal and you haven't heard from them, or you follow it up and you haven't heard from them? Or they have said sorry, we've gone with someone else like all of those leads that haven't become your clients, what happens to them? Do we just go oh, okay, they didn't buy from me.

06:22

 Next, let's go hunting. For more. No, we want to find ways that we can touch base with these leads, maybe it's even a loss lead could be someone also that you've worked with, well, months ago, 24 months ago, five years ago, check in see where they're at, see what's happening with them having a strategy to make sure that these leads haven't just slipped away, because a lot of the time we spend so much time and energy finding new leads getting people to inquire with us getting people to join our database, it is your job as a business owner, or as a marketing person or a salesperson to keep nurturing those people to look after they have already shopped with you or inquired with you treat them like they are gold because it's going to cost you more time, energy and money to find more of those people. 

07:10

So we want to look at what are we doing for our loss leads. And how do we stop them slipping away? So they can be the front end of that of how do we tailor our sales process to make sure that people don't become lost leads. How do we set up well, what processes nurturing sequences loss leads, strategies, maybe that's every three 612 months, if you find that you've got quite a month within your business, you can implement a loss lead strategy in there, where the database is already full and chunky, and you can just reach out and see what you can do to bring those people on board. Every single business faces, the challenge of loss leads at least every single business I've ever been into. And that comes from startups all the way through to multimillion-dollar businesses. 

07:50

But the challenge is some people don't know how to actually activate a loss lead strategy, we want to make sure that we are analyzing and learning from these situations, where are people falling through? Where are they falling off in our sales process? And obviously, that comes from the data and the metrics that we're doing on a regular basis, right? Because we've gotten raved about that before. But we want to be able to turn these situations or these setbacks into opportunities for growth. And remember that just because someone's a lost lead today doesn't mean that they're a lost lead forever, doesn't mean that they can't be a client in the next three, six, or 12 months. There's also opportunities for people to implement a loss lead strategy if you have done an event or if you have done some form of lead-generating activity. So if you've run a Facebook ad campaign for the past four weeks or two weeks, or whatever that is, what do you do with the people that haven't bought from you? Do they just sit on your database and get your ongoing newsletter? I think you can probably do things a little bit better than that. Maybe you can have a specific follow-up sequence or a nurturing sequence that really engages those people, ask them questions, understand what their needs are understanding what it is that they're looking for, understand why they didn't buy from you originally, that can all be really grateful oscillates strategies, I've also implemented into people's businesses where they run promotions for loss leads, or they have used a discounting strategy or a special bundle or package to bring people back into their business and see if we can get them to move forward from a client perspective in that way.

09:19

 There's also ways that you can look after your past clients from ongoing discounts or however much they've spent with you, you know, like when you buy something online, and you can gain points and things like that. So many companies wouldn't even be able to tell you who are their top clients that have paid you the most money because it's something that they don't ever look at. If someone is one of your top clients, look after them, nurture them, give them everything that they're looking for in needing from a business like yours. The next thing we want to do is we want to nurture our database.

09:48

 Now I know this can sound really simple and basic and a lot of people say yes ma'am nurturing my database by sending a weekly newsletter. Yeah, great. Newsletters are fantastic. A lot of the time they're not personalized a lot Over the time, they are very general, and they may have some tips and advice like my sales scoop does and things like that. But they don't necessarily touch base with people specifically, whether they've bought from you or they haven't bought from you, we want to make sure that we're nurturing our database and tailoring the way that we nurture it depending on where people are at within our business. 

10:18

So if you decide to have two sets of emails, or two sets of nurturing sequences, one from clients that have already bought from you, and ones that have haven't bought from you, or have only bought maybe a smaller offer maybe a similar offer, or a tiny offer or something along those lines, you can really tailor the way that you connect and nurture with those clients. If you nurture and tailor the way that you interact with your database, it can save you so much time, so much money, and so much effort, and it will repay you tenfold in sales and the way that you interact with your clients. I know what I really need to discuss the importance of staying engaged with your audience, right. If you don't know that about business, then maybe go back to some of our earlier episodes. But we want to make sure that we're providing valuable content. 

11:07

Were strategically engaging with our clients, whether they're past clients, new clients, whatever that looks like. But our main goal is to keep our brand top of mind so that it not only opens the avenues for repeat business and referrals. But it also lets people know exactly what your current offers and services are. If I give you a little bit of behind-the-scenes, I actually had an aha moment recently where one of my past clients reached out to me and said, Hey, I've got this client that's having an issue, she is looking to get some sales support. But everyone she's spoken to is a bit full-on and very masculine and pushy in sales. And she knows that she needs help with sales, but they haven't felt right with her. And so my past client was like, Ah, I've got the perfect girl for you, you need to chat with Marie. But in her message, she said to me, I don't know, if you're still doing one on ones with clients. And in my head, I was like, ah, that should be a no-brainer, she should know exactly what it is that I'm doing with you my business, I haven't nurtured that very well. So that's something that we will go back and look at in our next CEO date. And we'll actually implement a strategy to make sure that everyone knows how they can work with us.

12:10

 But you want to make sure that everyone's across how they can work with you how we can engage that repeat business and how people can refer other people to us. Now, another thing is that client retention isn't just about numbers, right? It's about how brand reputation happy satisfied clients become our best brand ambassadors, they are spreading the word about your exceptional services. They're the ones that are talking about you at barbecues at networking events when they know that their client needs an extra set of hands or some help, you should be that person that comes to mind. And having that brand reputation can be so important. It means that we have a strong focus on client satisfaction and the way constantly enhancing our branding image. It's not just about set and forget, it's about constantly engaging in increasing the way that people how we build our credibility and the trust in the market. Now, I want to tell you a story. 

13:04

One of my beautiful clients, we did a loss lead strategy in her business, she was finding that she was spending a lot of money on ads, and she was getting some conversions and things like that, which was great. But she was like, I want to take it to the next level in the quieter months within my business. I say great, let's do a loss lead strategy. Let's find those clients that we can look at retaining, sustaining, and really get your business thriving again. And she was like, Okay, great. So we went through, and I think we went back 12 months into her database. And we looked at where people fell off in her sales process. So did they send through a form but didn't give us all the details? Did we get to the stage of emailing them a quote or some prices and we didn't hear back? And so we kind of put people into categories depending on where they were in that process.

13:49

And so we set up some strategies for each individual section of her database. So if people had prices come through, and they hadn't bought or if we hadn't heard from people, we set up a specific strategy for each one. Now this cost her no money because she was already digging in and mining a database that she'd already had. She'd already paid the money for the Facebook ads or the Google ads or the social media strategies or whatever that got people coming through. So it was more about how do we reengage them. Now once we set up that strategy, she ended up with a 50% close rate from those last leads 50% If I said to you, I can get you 50% sales out of your database from the last leads that have inquired with you before as if you're not going to be like Hell yeah, Maree, sign me up, show me how to do it, right. 

14:35

But if we didn't look at implementing that loss leads strategy, she wouldn't have had that 50% increase in slow months in her business. So now what she's done is she's actually diarized and said, okay, for every single month, we're going to put a loss lead strategy in from people from six months ago. So if they inquired six months ago, six months later, there's a note in the diary or there's a strategy being implemented. Good to reengage those loss leads. It's costing her, I think it takes her time, maybe half an hour to implement it, I think she sends out some text messages and some emails, and there are a couple of calls that may happen depending on their specific clients and things like that. But the cash injection it gives her business is huge. 

15:17

So these are real case studies and success stories of businesses that have nailed their client retention. It's like when companies say to you like we have a VIP offer for you because you're one of our best clients. Now, you may not be one of their best clients, and you may have only bought from them once or twice, but they're giving you that experience of wow, this person is actually reaching out to me and giving me the offer that I'm looking for. Or they're giving me that best interest rate type service rather than only looking for the people that are coming newly through their door. So I see also a lot of businesses that say 10% off your first order now 10% off your first order, maybe a couple of dollars, maybe a couple of $100 Depending on your product or service. But how often are you giving that to clients that have been with you for years and years and years? Or is it just that nearly person that has jumped on your website, finds ways to nurture, right like look after your clients look after people that have bought from you in the past? So it's now time to get a little bit practical, I want to give you some actionable steps that you can implement to create some effective client retention strategies in your own business. 

16:25

Now, you can do things as I said, like your loyalty programs, you can look at having specific products or services or bundles or discounts or anything along those lines that you can use any sort of tactics or strategies that you can implement into your business, find ways to look after your current clients. Find ways to generate referrals, find ways to implement a loss lead strategy into your business, especially if you haven't quite months. Now I know last week, we spoke about cash calendars. If you find that January or October or March or whatever month it is for you and your business is a little bit quieter. Find ways to implement a loss lead strategy, find ways to reengage past clients find ways to reengage clients that have inquired, but haven't necessarily moved forward with you. 

17:13

So that is all from me today, make sure to implement and actually take some action on what we've discussed today. Because as I said, if you implement one or two of these things that we've spoken about, and you end up with a 50% increase in sales, email me and let me know, let me know what you've implemented, what's worked, what hasn't worked, if you've got questions about it, or you've got some ideas, but you're not necessarily sure, shoot me through an email, I'm more than happy to help. I do do this with my clients both from a one-on-one strategy perspective, as well as through our VIP Fast Track Packs, which we do. And it's also something we look at in her Sales Club because I want to make sure that every single person I'm working with that comes into my environment is gaining as many sales from a really connected pull type strategy rather than push, push, push, push, push, push, sell, sell, sell, sell, hustle, hustle, hustle, burnout, not interested. So we want to make sure that we're pulling people in that we're showing people how to work with us and why we are the best option to work with them. That is all for me today. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out you can email me at podcast at Mareekirkpatrick.com. We are opening doors to her sales club over the next couple of weeks. Our next doors open in March and I'm so excited to welcome a whole new group of women in if you want to jump on the waitlist and get some extra bonuses just go to Mareekirkpatrick.com/club where we will keep you up to date with everything that's happening. So until the next episode of the sales show keep selling from a connected and relationship focused space.

18:43

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the sales show. Please share it on social media for your friends to see and make sure you tag me at Maree Kirkpatrick so I can personally say if you would like to show me some love, leave me a review on Apple podcast. I'd love to hear from you email me at [email protected]. And if you'd like to work with me further or see any of the free resources mentioned on today's show, they can be found at Mareekirkpatrick.com I truly hope this podcast provides useful information and so much value to you so that you can build business with impact and income