Any business is, first of all, customers. Because the level of sales, the level of profitability and overall efficiency depend on them, or rather, on their availability and loyalty. The constancy of customers is one of the foundations of business stability. How to work with regular customers, the entrepreneur should pay special, close and the same constant attention. There are many effective ways how to make a customer permanent.

Regular customer

An entrepreneur must remember that a regular customer is not only a stable source of income, when loyal customers come to his store every day, buy products and goods from him, leaving their money to him, respectively.

It is also necessary to remember the universal rule - the "Pareto Rule" ("Pareto Principle", "Pareto Law" names may be different), named after the Italian engineer, economist and sociologist. In general terms, it is formulated as follows: “20% of efforts give 80% of the result. The remaining 80% of efforts give the remaining 20% ​​of the result. This rule is universal for different spheres of human activity.

In business, in particular, in retail, this rule is formulated as follows: 20% of customers give 80% of the store's revenue. The rest of the revenue, 20% of the total, comes from purchases by 80% of the buyers. Among the latter may be, for example, random, rare visitors who enter the store from time to time, etc.

Interesting:

Of course, among those 20% of buyers who provide 80% of the income and profit of the store, there may also be random people. But, apparently, the majority are still regular customers.

In this regard, the entrepreneur's task is also to ensure that the largest buyers, providing the largest part of his income and profits, become his regular customers. To do this, it is necessary to carry out special work, introduce and implement measures aimed at making them permanent.

How to make a client permanent

In fact, there are quite a few ways to do this. In general, a customer will become a regular when he comes to your store again and again:

Pleasantly, he will receive moral satisfaction.

Returning to your store and making purchases over and over again is beneficial for him in material terms, that is, in terms of money. The main tool for this is discounts to customers.

Specific ways to make a client permanent:

1. Discounts for regular customers. This is a kind of buying their loyalty. Customer discounts for persistence can be issued different ways, there are many of them.

For example, map regular customer, giving a discount for each next purchase. This is perhaps the most common way. Such cards can be different: simple, "gold", etc., they differ mainly in the size of the discount.

Usually it is from 5% on simple cards to 20% and even 30% for VIP clients who leave significant amounts of money in the store, so the entrepreneur has the opportunity to give him such a significant discount without prejudice to himself.

Such a loyalty card can be personalized, issued for a specific person, personalized is usually done for the owner of big discounts. It can also be bearer, that is, without indicating the name of the owner.
Find out,

The last bearer customer card is also beneficial in that it increases the number of buyers, including regular ones, when a circle of people - friends, relatives, colleagues of the owner of this card - uses one card with a slight but pleasant discount.

2. Bonuses and gifts constant for each subsequent purchase. For this, a loyalty card can also be issued.

3. "Cash Back"- cash back, if this term is translated into Russian. To do this, a plastic card is issued like a discount card, to which a sum of money or points is credited from each purchase. He will later spend the accumulated money and points on the next purchase.

For example, a person bought goods in a store for 5,000 rubles, and "Cash Back" on his card is 5%. So 250 rubles automatically after the purchase and payment will be credited to his card. In other words, the store will return these 250 rubles from the payment amount.

Having accumulated some amount, he can make another purchase, which in fact will be free for him. Well, and accordingly, in order to save up for such a free next purchase, the buyer will have to become a regular customer of this store at least for a while.

4. coalition activities. This is when several businesses that are not competitors to each other, as they work in different areas, are combined in such a way that a person who buys goods at any of the points of the coalition receives a discount.

A coalition can form, for example, a fitness club, a sportswear store, a sports store, and a sports and health food store.

Another very popular example of coalition programs is special bank cards. By issuing a certain card in a bank, a person gets the opportunity to buy goods and services in a large number of shops, salons, etc., which are serviced by this bank. Such a system is beneficial to all participants: the buyer receives a discount on the purchase, stores receive discounts on bank services, and the bank receives current assets in the form of money of organizations that are serviced by this bank.

5. Need to constantly keep up to date with the news: novelties, promotions, etc. If a purchase or customer order assumes that it will not be completed immediately, but in stages, it is necessary to inform about the state of affairs at each stage of the order. For example, during the delivery of goods to the buyer, it is important to know where right now, at this moment in time, the goods purchased (ordered) by him are located.

6. Buyers need always be honest and open. Even if something does not work out in the process of fulfilling the order, you need to talk about it openly and frankly, without hiding it. This is especially important when working with those clients who are already regular, so as not to lose them. Honesty will have to be learned by the entrepreneur himself, as well as to teach his managers and specialists.

8. The buyer will return to you when he was satisfied service level. This applies, in particular, to the courtesy of salespeople, managers and consultants. They should always be in sight, but not intrusive.

Of course, the seller must be competent and ready to answer any (within reasonable and adequate limits) questions of the buyer.

The above ways to make a client permanent are not the only ones - there are many. It all depends on the specific type of business, on what exactly is sold, where it is sold, on specific conditions.

Different methods can be effective for quite a long time. Some may only show effectiveness for a certain amount of time. Therefore, an entrepreneur must also carry out work to measure the effectiveness: how much and what result this or that measure to increase loyalty gave. The fact is that if you get carried away with satisfying the needs of the client, you may not notice how some activities can only start to bring a loss.

Two-Step Selling [Practical Recommendations] Andrey Alekseevich Parabellum

Appendix 6 Love your client as yourself! Working with regular and key clients

Appendix 6

Love your client as yourself! Working with regular and key clients

Large customers are welcome guests of any company. Working with them differs in many ways from the usual sales, it has many subtleties and pitfalls, which you can learn about either by your own mistakes or by reading an interview with Evgeny Kolotilov, one of Russia's leading specialists in working with key accounts (key-account-management) .

Every company has a pool of loyal customers. How to identify key ones among them?

Key customers can be clearly identified by a number of features. Now I will list them.

Volume of sales. If any of the regular customers starts to bring you more than 10% of sales, then this is a key client. Suppose a company has 200 customers, and one of them has a 10% (or more) share of sales. We take special care of such a key client, develop loyalty programs with him, make friends, blow dust off him, assign him a separate manager.

The head of the selling company, too (if the size of the company allows it), should visit this client from time to time and keep abreast of business with him. Here the idea is this: you need to be friends not only with the purchasing manager of the buying company, but also with many of its other employees. If the person with whom you communicate suddenly changes, then your contacts with the owner will come in handy, CEO and an accountant for the firm.

A key client can be both at the company level and at the department level: if you have several sales departments, and some client starts to bring more than 10% of sales to one of them, then he is the key one for this department. Also, a key client can be at the manager level.

Potential. This means that the consumer does not yet bring you a lot of money, buys little, but in general he could significantly increase purchases. Let's say he buys two cartridges from you, but you know for sure that in another place he buys servers for several million rubles. If you build a relationship with such a client correctly and can lure him away, then cooperation with him will be very beneficial for you.

Fame. A client may not bring a lot of money, not have potential, but if he is widely known and can be referred to (“We are working with such a cool client ...”), this will open many doors for you, and other buyers will trust you much more . Some companies do this on purpose - their representative comes to the conditional "Gazprom" or Sberbank and says: "Let's do something for you for free, and you will give us good review and we'll put you in our customer base."

Innovative client. There are very few of them (it is believed that they are about 2.5%), and if the client is just like that, then you can sell him new products and new services. These clients are also key, and in addition, these are partner clients with whom you share strategic plans. When working with them, you can already do without a tender: you just meet and discuss what he will buy, how he will buy, etc.

Demanding client. Due to the fact that he demands a lot from you, he ensures that your entire company works as it should. He will make you comply with quality standards, all procedures. If you have a problem with the service, he will definitely tell you about it - and your company will have to improve customer service. This is a client that can teach you something. For example, I was told that IKEA company teaches its suppliers how to work with the cost price, how to build logistics. These are priceless things. In general, such a client, even if he buys little, is also key, because he helps your business become better.

Here, according to the listed signs, you can determine which of your customers is the key one.

How many key customers can a company have? How many can be considered optimal for one manager?

If we take only the first sign (sales volume) as a basis, then it follows from it that by definition there cannot be more than ten key customers. But if you use other parameters, then the number of such clients can increase significantly. Therefore, there is no definitive answer to the first question.

But there is an answer to the question of how many key clients should be assigned to a specific manager. According to the classic key-account-management rules, one manager cannot manage more than three key clients, otherwise he will not be able to pay enough attention to them.

How is working with key clients different from working with ordinary ones?

You must build relationships with key customers both deep and wide. Be friends on many floors - with top managers, with middle managers and even with ordinary employees of the company. Build barriers for competitors: immediately offer a key client new products that you have, so that competitors do not get ahead of you. It is similar to the work of a farmer who cultivates his plot. It is necessary to attach a personal manager to a key client, who will be available 24 hours a day and establish friendly relations with this company. His task is to increase loyalty so that the client does not go anywhere. And of course, additional sales to this client.

Many people say: “We have a client who already buys products for 5 million rubles a month. We don’t want to go there, we don’t want to deepen cooperation – we’re afraid to scare us away.” This is fundamentally the wrong approach. Now this client buys for 5 million rubles, but if you start to be friends with him, hang out, work, then he may well buy for 15 and 20 million. It's just that the problem is that you don't offer anything, you don't work through these things.

What education should employees working with large and key clients have?

This is precisely the problem, because key account managers are not trained anywhere in Russia. There is simply no institute where they would teach to become a key-account manager. And business coaches who conduct seminars and trainings on this topic can be counted on the fingers. And there is practically no relevant literature either, except that we can name Radmilo Lukich and my book “Techniques for Selling to Large Clients”. I have not seen more specialized books on key-account-management in Russian. Therefore, managers do some things intuitively - and make a lot of mistakes.

And what are the most common mistakes executives make when working with key accounts?

The very first, main mistake is when the head of the company says: “All my clients are equal, we do not assign anyone to the VIP group. We treat the client who buys from us for 300 rubles and the client who makes purchases for 3 million rubles in the same way.” This is the dumbest thing you can do. Separate large and key clients into separate groups and take care of them in a special way.

The second mistake is when the manager thinks that it is not respectable for him to engage in sales, so he sends account managers to key clients, while he himself is not familiar with either top managers or the owners of these companies. The manager must be aware of all matters relating to the main clients, visit them regularly and be friends with them.

The third mistake is when they do not allocate a special manager to interact with key customers. And it turns out that the same employee accepts every little thing and works with a key client. In the first case, this is the work of a "smart", in the second - an analyst. They are very difficult to combine.

Another mistake is when the company does not collect information about key customers. If all you know is the contact's name, company details, phone number, and address, that's no good. The dossiers on key clients that I saw in the "right" companies were 20 to 40 pages long. There is all the information about the company, about the people with whom the manager communicates, including what kind of cuisine they prefer, what hobbies they have; their birthdays are listed, etc.

What is a "critical dependency" on a client or group of clients?

A critical dependency is a situation where a client can dictate terms to you, because if he leaves, your company will either suffer losses or lose preferences in working with suppliers. Let's say you have a key client. He purchases 5,000 specific items each month that you purchase from the factory. Due to the fact that you take so much, the factory gives big discount, and to all other customers your company can offer low price. If the key client leaves, then you will immediately lose your wholesale discount. We will have to raise prices for all other customers, and they, having learned about it, most likely will not stay either. And this is an additional financial loss.

In addition, a critical dependency is a situation where the share of some client in your sales exceeds 50%. Accordingly, if he stops cooperating with you, the company may go into negative territory, because all expenses are planned taking into account the money that he brings.

How should a company that has fallen into such an addiction act?

If you see that you can become critically dependent on any client, you need to work as actively as possible on expanding your client base. Look for new customers and increase sales to those who already cooperate with you. Then, in addition to the key client, you will have other customers, thanks to which the company will stay afloat in a critical situation. In other words, you need to diversify as much as possible. If you see that a certain client is starting to bring in more than 20-30% of your company, or, even worse, more than 40% of all money, the first thing to do is to expand the sales force to reduce this figure. But not due to the fact that the client will buy less, but due to the fact that other consumers will appear who will start bringing more money.

If the company has a mono-client, how to mitigate the risks?

We are talking about a situation where a company has only one customer. It happens. Take for example a system integrator who works with only one oil company or a bank. Of course, if something bad happens to this bank, God forbid, then the system integrator will have a very, very bad time. You can reduce the risks in the same way as I suggested above: create an active sales department that will attract new customers. This will allow the company to continue to exist quietly in the event of the loss of a monoclient. And, of course, it is necessary to simultaneously increase the loyalty of this client so that he does not go anywhere. This requires special loyalty programs.

However, you can never be 100% safe. Anything can happen on the market: the company will be sold, and it will have other owners, the head will change, a new supplier will come to the market with better conditions than yours ... Therefore, it would be easy to hope that you will always be lucky stupid and unprofessional.

What to do if a large and important client left?

How to get back a lost customer? In fact, this is the topic of a separate training, I have one, called “Resuscitation of Departed Clients”.

Unfortunately, when key clients leave, sometimes nothing can be done. And sometimes you can, if only you do it very quickly. Immediately you need to arrange a personal meeting with the head of the company, accompanying this with the words: “I don’t dispute anything, I don’t protest, let’s just have lunch together.” And you meet for lunch on neutral ground. It's the best.

If you can’t agree on a joint lunch, then you go to the company’s office, take some kind of gift with you and ask: “You stopped buying from us, what happened?”

They answer you: “We decided to change the supplier because ...” Further options are possible:

We were offered the best conditions;

We were not satisfied with your service;

We no longer need what we bought from you (now we produce it ourselves, we buy it directly from China, etc.).

So you find out why the client left, what happened. And then you ask the leader the question "What if ...": "What if we could fix this situation?" or “What if we could offer you better or the same terms as you got?” And depending on what the client answers, you can either return it or finally understand that it is lost.

If you understand that it will not be possible to return the client, you should still part well, because it is not known how they will treat him in a new place. Tell him: "You have a fallback, you can always go back if something goes wrong." After that, leave a gift to the client and leave without demanding anything in return. If you do this, there is a chance that after some time the client will remember you and either buy something from you, or advise someone to pay attention to your company.

If the client left because he no longer needs your products or your services, then you can ask him to introduce you to someone and recommend someone.

And finally. What should you always keep in mind when working with a large client?

It must be remembered that companies do not buy from companies, but people buy from people. We say "business for business", but the business itself does not buy or sell anything. Real people buy from real people. That is why, if you work with large clients, you should first of all make friends with them, treat them as your very good acquaintances and control not only how much money you received from them, but also how much you improved your relationship with them.

There is this expression: Good seller he has dinner with a client, and a very good one has breakfast. If you make friends with clients, hang out and keep abreast of their news, then you can work with them for a long time.

One of my teachers, Jay Abraham, said that many business people make a very big mistake: they fall in love with their business, when it would be much better if they fell in love with their customers. This is very true when it comes to working with key clients. Fall in love with them! This does not mean spreading a rug in front of them, it means building normal, trusting partnerships with them. And then everything will work out.

Don't set traps for yourself! There are many ways in which salespeople deceive themselves into preferring hard (and unprofitable) work over good work. Often the hard work they are immersed in is the result of a trap