Other business people are going to try and steal your clients all the time. It’s truly never-ending. In such times of testing, you need to be ruthless in your thoughts, mindset, and demeanor.
In business you need good salesmanship or the other guy is going to steal your clients.
Your clients need to fully believe, acknowledge, and communicate with you an important idea. That golden idea is such:
Their businesses success is coming directly from your work.
Until this idea is materialized, you have not won them over as a road base book of business.
When you win a client over they will stay with you for at least another 6 months which buys you more time to perform, grow the relationship, and share them more of your personality.
Another effective tactic in retaining clients longer is through email drip report campaigns. This is one of my favorites because the tool serves as an effective radar mechanism communicating with you how the account is performing. If the report beckons your time and attention for optimization work then so be it. Better to have the signal come from an active position (automated reports) than a passive (bad call/email) one.
When you’re a highly skilled professional many people are going to want your time. A way to think about time management with a book of clients is through the following checklist
> contract duration
> performance/happiness with services
> seasonality
> account size
Try out thinking about your own services are either free (rapport building through consulting/sales calls) or very expensive because they work and few people can match the level of value I bring to the marketplace. These skills and salesmanship improve client retention.
The marketplace cares about value and results. Analytics are the marketplaces report card in how valuable your services are in providing a solution to problems.
My craft solves the “no business” problem. Marketers drive more business entailing more revenue solving the “no business” problem.
Good businesspeople understand expensive services are effective, necessary, and useful. They are not afraid to pay for them. They need the problem solved. They need your service or their business will suffer.
Once clients start to think of you like this, retention will go up.