The Other Two Most Important Customers

“The customers who have quit you can be your greatest source of learning. You’d prefer to learn before they leave, but if they’ve left you – you must find out why!”

Other than your current customers.

If you listen to them, these customers will tell you how to keep more of your current customers, how to attract customers from your competition and how to get back customers you have lost.

If those are things you’d like to know how to do, keep reading.

Who are these customers?

Past Customers & Your Competitor’s Customers

Your past customers quit you and, assuming they still need your product or service, moved to what they considered a better option. Understanding how that happened is information you must have. They loved you, but then they didn’t. What happened?

Did they get frustrated because of poor customer service? Was there a product defect? Did they simply perceive greater value from your competitor? Was it just easier to use your competitor’s product?

This type of information can make your business if you gather it and act on it. It can kill your business if you don’t.

How do you reach out to past customers? You should have all of their contact information in your customer database. If you don’t or the information is old, find them via social media, associations or any other means you can find. Just find them and get the information you need to excel!

Now let’s talk about your competitor’s customers. For many of the same reasons you need to speak with your past customers, your competitor’s customers can also be a goldmine of information. Surveying your competition’s customers is often the best way to find out how your product or service stacks up to the competition. The key is to ask them about their experience with your competitor’s brand, not your own. You can then use that data to see how satisfied your customers are in comparison to theirs.

Finding and gaining access to your competitor’s customers can be a bit more challenging. You can go old school and catch them coming out of their place of business – if you are in a store front type business and aren’t afraid of being run off (or worse).

A less dangerous solution would be to buy list from a marketing company like InfoUSA. Let’s say you sell to doctor’s offices. Buy a list of all the doctor’s offices in your geographic reach (or just a sample area). Now compare that to your customer list and pull all of your customers out. You now have a list of people that could be using your product but are using a competitor’s product or some sort of alternative.

This group is a very rich source of information. Ask them who they use, how happy they are with them, how much they spend, etc.

Once you’ve gathered data from your past clients and your competitors’ clients you must put it to use. Create strategies to win back past customers and to take market share from your competitors. Improve your products, out sell, out service – whatever it takes. You’ve got the information you need, now go make it happen!

Need help getting started? Contact us now via our website or just give us a call at 229-375-5613 and we’ll help you get going.

Thank you for being a part of our values driven community!

Image courtesy of Wikimedia.org.

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