Six ways to win & keep customers

It takes energy and perseverance to win new business in the toughest economic conditions since the Great Depression. Here are six fundamental business strategies to beat the competition and come out on top.

Reinvent client relationships

The GFC has been devastating for the Australian design sector. Twenty-two year-old industrial design consultancy Design + Industry has also had to cope with the axing of the Australian Government’s commercial ready grants in May 2008 that saw the company lose around one third of its business in one week. Export business fell from 50% of turnover to less than 5%.

Design + Industry also faced the nightmare of two clients falling into receivership, unable to pay $100,000-plus invoices. Rather than write off the bad debts, Design + Industry founder and chief executive Murray Hunter helped the companies out of the mess they were in, finding companies to buy or fund their businesses.

“It is about going further than you have ever gone before with your clients, helping them past obstacles,” says Hunter. Instead of being an angry creditor, Hunter became a shelter in the storm, connecting the firm with contacts that helped save the businesses. As a result, Hunter saw his debt repaid and has retained clients.
“We became their secret weapon,” he says. Despite widespread redundancies in the sector, Hunter’s 40 staff has held onto their jobs and his firm has won major contracts, both offshore and locally in 2009.

Create multiple pressure points and ramp up sales

Adelaide-based travel agent Phil Hoffmann has five retail stores to worry about. Hoffmann has been hell-bent on making sure his clients and other potential customers know about the historically cheap travel deals available through as many sales channels as possible.
“There’s not a day when we don’t think about getting things out to clients,” says Hoffmann, who has the added benefit of knowing that news about the dollar, heavy advertising campaigns from airlines and competitors are helping to get the message out about the travel deals.

Hoffmann has used all manner of marketing approaches, radio, eNewsletters, expos, sausage sizzles and even opening his head office on Sundays to try and drum up business. He is using what SmartCompany blogger and BOOM! Sales managing director Trent Leyshan likes to call “multiple pressure points” to win new business.

This integrated approach, says Leyshan, lowers resistance from the client and builds trust. “It may cost a little more and require more thought and planning, however the results are worth the effort,” he says.

Leyshan likes to practise what he preaches. A recent BOOM! Sales campaign to promote a series of seminars started off with a mail out of miniature footballs to a small target group. The balls were labelled ‘Kick more goals with BOOM! Sales’ and directed people to the company website.

“We then called and followed-up to see if they had put the balls to good use in the office and if they visited our website? We then asked them some questions and based on their responses we invited them to attend our next public program as our guest,” says Leyshan.

The success rate was a 29% immediate conversion and an additional 35% interest in future programs and more information.

Similarly, Design + Industry’s Hunter has been ramping up his sales team, mining the company database and introducing new sales monitoring procedures to make sure his team are contacting clients more frequently.

According to University of Queensland business school’s innovation expert Dr John Steen, this customer-centric approach needs to be built into the business – making staff accountable for their person-to-person customer management, creating individual plans and job descriptions with clear guidelines about the value of sales targets, customer relationships and accountability measures. “It needs to be hardwired into the business plan,” he says.

Find the customers’ pain and get into their heads

At a Committee of Economic Development Australia (CEDA) Trustee business strategy session in Brisbane on October 27, 2009, turnaround specialist and former managing director of the Peanut Company of Australia Bob Hansen asked the audience of CEOs and senior executives how many of them had talked to their customers and frontline employees today. Hansen asked if these leaders were relying on reports from consultants or “are you trying to get into your customers’ heads?”

Fellow panellist Dr John Steen says the audience looked visibly uncomfortable with this simple, fundamental question. “Nobody really came forward with stories about how they did this as a matter of routine business,” says Steen.

Steen was surprised that the response was so lackluster. He spends his working days looking at business innovation and how companies build their fortunes on creating and selling new ideas and services.

“Companies that are innovating to solve customers’ problems and provide a very clear value proposition are doing very well,” says Steen. “It’s about seeing a problem in new ways.”

Toronto-based business developer at GeNUIT Jim Barnet recommends approaching sales calls as an exercise in looking for pain, for problems that you can address,” he says.

“Then almost every single business executive with that problem would be very interested in talking to someone who could potentially make that problem go away.”