Have you ever lost a customer? It’s painful. I’ve been there.
It’s possible never to lose another customer again though.
That’s right.
We had a breakthrough recently. You know, the kind where you can’t believe no one ever taught you this before, that should have been so obvious to you?
We experienced one of those last year in our business. We read the book, “Never Lose a Customer Again” by Joey Coleman.
There are all kinds of powerful and transformative concepts in there, about developing processes to care for your customers, to delight them, to love them.
But one of them is life-changing.
Most businesses, and I’m guilty of this for most of my life, will celebrate when a new customer signs the agreement and writes them a check. Or, when they hit their “numbers” at the end of the month.
After that though, there’s not a lot of celebrating, until’ the customer pays the business more money.
Think about that from the customer’s perspective. If you are the customer, you sign up to implement a great new accounting system. The sales rep gives you a big smile as you hand him the check. He goes back and uncorks a bottle of champagne with his sales manager, because he closed another one!
When do you celebrate in your business? Is it when you win, or when your customers win?
You, on the other hand, have only paid money. You haven’t achieved anything yet, because they haven’t implemented the accounting system you purchased. You haven’t saved money yet as they promised, or your processes aren’t more efficient yet like they said they would be. In fact, you might even be feeling a little bit nervous as you drive home. “Have I made a wise decision?” “Will they come through, and do what they said they are going to do?” “Should I have gone with the competitor?” “Will this reflect poorly on me, with my boss or my board of directors sees how much I spent on this?”
You’ve heard of it, it’s called Buyer’s Remorse.
Everyone gets it.
Everyone.
Everyone gets buyer’s remorse.
As in, your customers get it after they sign the check to buy what it is you sell.
What are you doing to preempt buyer’s remorse for your customers?
Herein lies the secret magic key sauce to unlocking customers for life. To never lose another customer again. There are other things, but this one is foundational.
Here’s what we learned.
Most businesses celebrate you as a customer when you literally LOSE. When you lose money and sign that check.
And they do NOT celebrate as a general rule, when you WIN.
Here’s what shifted the entire paradigm for us. We decided to celebrate when our customers win, not when we win. When they sign the check, that’s not the end, that’s the beginning.
I’ll say it again. We decided to celebrate when our customers win, not when we win.
Did you hear that?
We decided to celebrate when our customers win, not when we win.
When our customers see real results and experience real breakthroughs, that’s when we celebrate.
When they win, we celebrate. We’ve always celebrated when they win, but not as a matter of focused intention. Now we do.
Just yesterday one of our clients told us that as a direct result of a new process we implemented on their behalf to shorten their sales cycle and make the process truly delightful for their customers, (it used to take 1-2 months to close a deal) they set a company record by closing a deal in 5 days. Plus the customer had a much better experience.
What???!!!
We were literally jumping off the walls in celebration! We even drove down and did a toast with them, to celebrate their win.
Folks, it’s a ton of fun to celebrate when your customers win!
Imagine living in a world where companies only celebrated when their customers win?
I can’t imagine what that would look like, but that world would be a place where I would want to live and buy stuff and spend my life. Let’s create that world.
