How to Beat Sticker Shock and Harness the Power of ‘Free’ to Create Customer Loyalty
A group of college students were grabbing a late-night snack at a local restaurant. When they were finished, the waitress plunked the tab down on their table.
“I knew there would be a catch!” one of the guys said. (By the way, he used this same lame joke almost every time he had a restaurant meal.)
Let me ask you a question: Is the moment when the customer discovers the “catch,” the best moment for the customer to be thinking about how much tip to leave?
This is a problem that is inherent to nearly every business transaction. Our presentation of the bill or invoice is almost always the last step of our interaction. Is this really the final impression you want to make on someone?
Now that you understand this and see the problem, you need to develop strategies that extend your contact with your customers or clients beyond the day you drop the invoice in the mail. Convincing your customers to pay upfront is one idea, but probably not a very realistic one.
It’s much more realistic to find free products or services that you can give your clients after their initial product or service has been delivered and you’ve billed them for it. This will be different for every company, but let me suggest some approaches or ways to look for opportunities to do this.
Make non-sales calls. Call your best customers frequently at intervals when you know there won’t be a sale involved. Ask how they’re doing, and if there is anything you can do for them–offer information, advice, etc. Perhaps some of your customers would appreciate it if you made an introduction for them. Maybe you know someone that they would like to start developing as a prospect. Have them scan through your LinkedIn contacts to see if any names jump out.
Give away excess capacity. Some companies occasionally find themselves with excess capacity. This can be from an internal production run of some kind, or perhaps they are buying something that requires a minimum order, but they know they won’t use it all. Let one or more of your best customers know about your situation and offer to let them have what you won’t be using.
Let me give you a very simple example: You’re buying topsoil to improve your landscaping and have to purchase it by the truckload. You won’t use it all, so you call a good customer and say, “Hey, we’re going to have some extra topsoil at the end of the week. If you send a truck over, you can have it.”
Offer informational and instructional materials. These can be things like instructional videos you create, current books you buy and send to your best customers, or special sessions you hold. Some companies could hold an annual one-day or half-day conference that looks forward to industry developments, or high-level sessions that are like TED talks, but for the specific industry of interest.
I’ve thrown out just a few ideas to get you thinking. The goal is to let your best clients know that you don’t think of them just in terms of your ability to bill them. You want them to know that you care about their success and about them as people. You want them to see that their relationship to you has value beyond the specific product or service that they buy from you.
If you can accomplish this, it will increase their loyalty to your company, reduce customer churn, and make you more profitable and stable going forward.
