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How NOT to Get Customers

Written by: David Frey

Article Overview: Imagine having your vendor shut you down and cause financial damage to your business as a result of the growth of your business. Crazy isn't it. Read this article to find out how it happened to me.

How NOT to Get Customers

If you were a website owner of a high traffic, high converting website, how would you like to visit your site one day and see this...

http://url123.com/883er

Well, that exactly what I saw last Wednesday.

And within just a few minutes I started getting calls from customers and friends telling me that my site was down.

Needless to say...I freaked!

I looked in my inbox and there was an email from my hosting company. Here's what it said...

Your site was suspended because it was crashing our server. You will need to upgrade to a semi-dedicated or dedicated server with such high usage.

Best Regards,

Steve

Technical Support Manager

http://www.hostingcompany.shtml
hostingcompany.com

Note: I've used a fictitious name (hostingcompany.com) to protect the guilty.


So that was it - - my hosting company shut my site down because it was getting too much traffic.

They didn't even have enough courtesy to pick up the phone and tell me that they were shutting my site down!

That email could have got caught in spam filters and never reached me. Or I could have been out of town and never known about it.

Amazing!

Now Here's What's Even More Amazing...

They had a great opportunity to upgrade me to a more expensive plan.

In fact, their semi-dedicated server option was $50 more a month than I was already paying.

It would have been an easy upsell if they had just called me up and talked me through it.

Instead they decided to shut me down.

Imagine, having a really good client. Now imagine that client becoming very successful, hence, they were prone to buy more product from you.

Now imagine that instead of taking care of that client you just shut off their account.

Does that make sense?

Unfortunately, it happens in the hosting business every day.

The Three Types of Customers

One of the best things you can do for your small business is to divide your customers up into three groups.

Group A - Good Customers (the 20% that bring you 80% of your revenue).

Group B - Okay Customers

Group C - Bad Customers (the customers that cost you more in time, money, and frustration than they're worth)

Then create a service plan for each of them.

Treat the Group A customers with care, concern, and love and a little bit extra.

Treat the Group B customers with good service.

Get rid of the Group C customers (if you can).

There are more sophisticated ways of grouping your customers but I won't talk about them. At the very least, pick out your best customers and treat them very well.

How to Identify Your Best Customers

One way to identify who your best customers are is to do a "recency, frequency, and monetary analysis (RFM Analysis).

To do that you put all your customers in a spreadsheet (or database) with their company name with individual sales transactions and with their associated transaction dates.

Then you simply add up which customers have performed the most high dollar sales transactions with you in the past 6 - 8 months.

These are your best customers.

Now that you know who your best customers are, then create a "special treatment" plan for them that will result in even more customer loyalty and hopefully more referrals.

Conclusion

I finally got my site back online, but it was a nightmare.

I was simply amazed that this hosting company was willing to "financially hurt" a good customer who was a prime prospect for spending even more money with them.

It just reminded me how important it is to be kind to your customers. Especially the ones that give you lots of money

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Re: Two Useful Books To Help You Focus On The CLIENT - Hi David, To add to your thread, I'd like to recommend Jonathan Tisch's "Chocolates On The Pillow Aren't Enough: Reinventing The Customer Experience". Tisch's book includes content on "Welcoming Customers", "The New Art of Customization", "The Challenges of Customer Diversity" and "Offering Something Extra to Your Customers" to name a few.
How to Do Great Marketing with (Amost) No Money - I've given this presentation to CEOs many times. Now i can share it with you. But I cannot because I do not yet have 20 posts. Jeff Ogden, President Find New Customers
Re: Are Business Owners too Old School to be Sold by a blog - [quote:140e27hj]Customers Pick Static Documents over Blog Entries 8 to 1 on Average[/quote:140e27hj] Interesting study. Just as a commenter said on your post... don't call it a blog. I agree.
Re: pitching - Friendliness is closely related to the concept of "permission marketing" as articulated by Seth Godin. The subtitle of his book says it all: "Permission Marketing: Turning Strangers into Friends and Friends into Customers." The old method was "interruption marketing" where you suddenly get an ad in your face whether you want it or not...
20% increase - One of my businesses uses a system to help business owners manage customer relationships and encourage more referrals. I'm finding that this economy is making business owners take a second look at their business and it's assets (aka customers) to see how they can leverage them. Make those Customers (one-time sale) into Clients (repeat sales). I'm finding them more open to having this discussion with me and the results are speaking for itself. Everyone I've worked with so far has seen at least a 20% increase in sales or referrals within 4-6 months all done by managing an existing relationship.


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