How To Create Loyal Clients

Everyone wants to keep their clients, especially their key accounts. But not everyone deserves to keep his or her key accounts. You know this as a salesperson because you are winning your competitor’s at-risk clients.

Do you want to create loyal clients? Ask yourself these questions (no lie, this is going to sting a little . . . maybe more than a little).

Be Loyal

If you want loyal clients, then be loyal. Loyalty is something that is reciprocated.

1. Are you still treating your client like you did when they were a prospect?

2. Are you still competing for their business by finding ways to make a difference for them? Or have you slipped into the comfortable groove of entitlement and apathy?

3. Are you still as proactive as when you first won their business? Are you still taking the initiative and acting on your unsolicited ideas to create value for your client?

4. Are you still providing them with the outcome that you promised and that you sold? Are you still managing that outcome?

Go back and answer these questions as if you were your client.

Listen

Loyalty is built on relationships, and relationships are built on caring. There is nothing that indicates that you care better than listening.

5. Are you spending time listening to your clients? Enough time?

6. When you are with your client, are you really listening? Are you listening to the people within your client’s organization who are affected by what you do? Are you three levels deep in the organization listening to the people who weren’t in the boardroom when you made your presentation to the buying committee?

7. Or are you simply listening to the decision-maker?

8. Are you listening with the intention of discovering whether or not you are becoming easier to business with, or harder to do business with?

Go back and answer these questions as if you were a person three levels deep within your client’s organization.

Change With Them

Your clients are changing. Their loyalty has a price. That price is your willingness and your ability to change with them.

9. What changes have you implemented for and with your client in the last 90 days?

10. What changes are you implementing in the next 90 days based on what you have you learned from your clients?

11. What changes are you proactively making that will benefit your clients?

Treat Your Clients Like They Important When They Don’t Buy

The last year was a tough year for business. Demand was down across almost all industries. Inevitably, some of your clients stopped using you and your services because their needs evaporated.

12. How do you treat your clients when they are not buying?

13. Because they had no need, did they still receive your full and undivided attention? Or did they feel your neglect?

14. What did you do to help them during the time their business was down?

15. Did you make the herculean effort to make a difference for them when making a difference was most difficult?

16. Were you loyal to your clients when there was nothing in it for you?

Read my interview with Tom Peters (Part One and Part Two).

Read my Blogs.com featured guest post on the Top Ten Sales blogs.

Read my monthly post on Sales Bloggers Union.

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