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Recycling is a huge part of our culture now.  We recycle paper, plastics, metals, electronic equipment, the list goes on.  Recycling can be very very beneficial for a business.  The best thing a company can recycle is their customers.

Let me explain.  As a business owner you know that it takes a lot of work to get a customer to do business with you.  With almost any product or service available at the click of a mouse it’s a battle to get them in the door (or virtual door) let alone get them to come back.

So where do our customers go?

• Approximately 1% of your customers will not return or refer others because they will die. Well you can’t stop that one!
• Roughly 3% of your customers will move away and unless your a national chain you will lose that business also.
• About 5% develop other friendships.  You may be the best realtor in town but if your customer marries another realtor your luck has run out.
• Approximately 14% of your customers will leave because they are dissatisfied with the product.
• Around 68% of your customers don’t come back because they perceive an attitude of indifference from you, they don’t feel appreciated. It’s the silent killer of your business. This is the single biggest reason why customers don’t come back. Often you don’t even know it’s happened.

So there you have it.  About 3/4 of your customers leave you because you have failed to show them that you appreciate their business.

Here’s the big question, and yes you already know the answer.  Is it less expensive and frustrating to try to get new customers to buy from you? or to simply recycle the ones you have and get them to come back?

Take a minute to send a card, give a gift or just tell them to their faces that you appreciate them doing business with you.  That simple thing will keep them coming back for a very long time.

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About The Author:

	Mike Liddicoat is a Husband, Father, Speaker and the Sales & Marketing Director of AttaBoy! Solutions. His goal is to help businesses maintain relationships, ensure future business and acquire new referrals through appreciation marketing. Throughout this blog you can sign up for updates, news, special offers, discounts and more. So take a look around, leave a comment or two and enjoy.
Contact Mike

In order to keep new customers coming in and, more importantly, keeping the customers that you already have coming back, there are some simple  steps you can follow:

1.Always give maximum product quality.

Getting to know what your customers expect and being able to constantly change to meet those needs will keep your customers coming back.  Your customers are satisfied when what they receive in both service and product quality  surpass their expectations.

This is basic stuff.  Many companies try all kinds of gimmicks to keep customers yet they ignore this simple “rule”.  When your customers pay for something, they expect, and deserve, great service and quality products.  That’s what you expect when you shop isn’t it?

2. Under Promise and Over Deliver.

It used to be that it was easy to keep a customer.  Either you were the only store of it’s kind in town or the only one that carried that particular product.  Today with all the competition, both neighboring stores and online customers can be quick to go from one store to another with no regard to loyalty. Today you have to work hard at keeping your customers and that means staying one step ahead of your competition.

Things you can do include offering more value for less cost handle your customers questions and complaints quickly and fairly, get your customers engaged with your company by asking them what they want in a company and how you can better serve them.

3.Communication with your Customers is Key.

Keeping open communication with your customers gives them a feeling of belonging.  They feel more like it is their company.  They will be more loyal and refer more family and friends because they know that you care about them.

Loyal customers means more initial sales and more repeat business.  It also means that they will talk about your company more and that creates more business without the extra expense of advertising. Word of mouth is the most powerful form of advertising and a customer who feels a part of your business will tell his friends.

“Executives are finding that the
winning differentiators is no longer
product or price, but the level of
customer engagement relative to
the competition.”
– Rama Ramaswami, Senior Editor,
Economist Intelligence Unit

Keep your customer involved with your business and make them feel like family and you will have a customer for life.
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About The Author:

	Mike Liddicoat is a Husband, Father, Speaker and the Sales & Marketing Director of AttaBoy! Solutions. His goal is to help businesses maintain relationships, ensure future business and acquire new referrals through appreciation marketing. Throughout this blog you can sign up for updates, news, special offers, discounts and more. So take a look around, leave a comment or two and enjoy.
Contact Mike

Almost every business owner or manager will tell you that having loyal customers is the key to a successful business.  If that’s true then what are they doing to keep those customers coming back?

Most will tell you that they send emails or newsletters on a regular basis to keep in touch.  Others will say that they use a discount program to show their appreciation.

It’s not to say that these are bad things but they are not enough.  To create loyalty and get your customer engaged with you takes effort and planning.  Creating strong relationships is one of the most critical ways to retain more of your customers and grow your business faster because happy customers` will use you more and refer friends which will give you a tremendous competitive edge over your competitions.

Here are some statistics showing that challenges that businesses face today:

• Each year the average company loses 10-15% of its customer base
– Bain & Company
• “84% of customers who leave, do so because of poor service”
– Forum Corp
• “A typical business only hears from 4% of its dissatisfied customers—the other 96% leave, 91% for good”
– Jim Barnes, “Secrets of CRM”

By understanding why your customers are leaving you and how you can retain them is priceless information.  The best way to find out what they want is to ask them, read the article ” You Just Need To Ask ” 11/19/2010

The sooner you know what makes your customers tick, the sooner you can begin to cultivate a strong and long lasting relationship to keep your business alive in any economy.

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About The Author:

	Mike Liddicoat is a Husband, Father, Speaker and the Sales & Marketing Director of AttaBoy! Solutions. His goal is to help businesses maintain relationships, ensure future business and acquire new referrals through appreciation marketing. Throughout this blog you can sign up for updates, news, special offers, discounts and more. So take a look around, leave a comment or two and enjoy.
Contact Mike

When it comes time to get a gift for a family member or friend how do you decide what to get.  Well you take into consideration their likes and dislikes, hobbies or interests.

You choose something that, based on your intimate knowledge of them, you know they will enjoy.

But what about when it comes to business gifts?  How do you make a good choice when you may not know that much personal information about your recipient?  One way is to guess.  Get a gift and hope for the best.  However, you may not get them a memorable gift or a gift they can use.  It might just be something they will toss away or give to somebody else.

The best  choice for a gift is one that the recipient makes for themselves.  But how do you do that?

Easy!  Our Gift Collections make giving business gifts and incentives easy by offering the Gift of Choice. With these collections, recipients choose their own gift from a wide selection of top-quality, brand-name merchandise by redeeming them online. It’s the perfect solution for small to mid-size businesses – and virtually every budget, occasion, and event!

How do they work?

It’s simple and convenient for your business. You just:

1. CHOOSE the budget range you want to stay within.
2. BUY a Gift Collection on line or from your sales associate.
3. GIVE the gift to the recipient to redeem for their perfect gift!

Then, the recipient:

1. DISCOVERS and browses their Gift Collection online.
2. SELECTS the perfect gift from the many name-brand items.
3. RECEIVES the gift shipped right to their door, free of charge.

Here are some occasions when these Gift Collections work amazingly well:

• Sales incentives
• Holidays
• Employee weddings/new baby
• Customer thank you
• New customer welcome
• Corporate events
• Promotions
• Service awards
• Employee acknowledgment
• Safety awards

Here is what these Gift Collections can do for your business?

They can be given to employees, co-workers, supervisors, managers, customers, business associates, and service providers to help:

• Increase productivity
• Generate sales increases
• Improve morale
• Strengthen employee performance
• Create a safer workplace
• Inspire great ideas and suggestions
• Develop loyalty and dedication
• Enhance work environment

Why give these Gift Collections?

Well they have been rewarding, motivating, and inspiring employees and customers for nearly 40 years, and they are trusted by businesses because they offer:

• 180-day Satisfaction Guarantee
• Easy online redemption
• Popular brand-name gifts
• No minimum order required
• Monetary value not displayed to recipient
• Saves the time and expense of shopping for gifts

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About The Author:

	Mike Liddicoat is a Husband, Father, Speaker and the Sales & Marketing Director of AttaBoy! Solutions. His goal is to help businesses maintain relationships, ensure future business and acquire new referrals through appreciation marketing. Throughout this blog you can sign up for updates, news, special offers, discounts and more. So take a look around, leave a comment or two and enjoy.
Contact Mike

Whether you are looking to create a bigger list of prospects or generate an increase in your company sales, contests are a great catalyst to accomplishing your goals.

Contests come in many forms and can be done both online and off. The possibilities are endless. Below are just a few ideas to get you started:

Drawings – entrance requires a form to be filled out that just includes a name and email address. You can always ask for more later, but asking for alot of personal information up front will reduce your entries.

Q & A – ask a simple question that must be answered in order for an entry to qualify. Again, do not ask for more than a name and email address (and of course the answer to the question). When using Q & A online, changing the question daily will encourage people to come back. They return daily to have another entry in the contest, but they will also return for the question!

Trivia – this type of question requires more thought. You may ask something related to your business. This may reduce the number of entries you receive compared to a simple drawing and because the answer is specific to your business, it may discourage some. You can, however, choose to be more general in your question.

Scavenger Hunt – hide graphics or a specific word on different pages within your website. Provide clues from one item to the next. Don’t make them too hard or people will give up. If you provide good clues people will be able to keep moving all around your site to find them all. You can make things even more interesting by placing a letter on each graphic and requiring that the contestant unscramble the letters to form a word.

Running a contest can be a great traffic booster, a way to grow your subscriber base and can also increase sales. Once you have decided which type of contest your are going to run and have put all the details together, be sure to get the the word out to your customers and prospects and through social media. And don’t forget to publicize the winner once the contest is over. You will surely be happy with the results you receive.
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About The Author:

Sally Liddicoat is a Wife, Mother, Speaker and the Founder & CEO of AttaBoy! Solutions. Her goal is to help businesses increase sales, generate ongoing referrals, strengthen relationships and create loyal customers and employees through appreciation marketing. Throughout this blog you can sign up for updates, news, special offers, discounts and more. So take a look around, leave a comment or two and enjoy.

Contact Sally

Reward and recognition are the best ways to reinforce the importance of providing excellent customer service and a great way to get your employees attention. If you are wanting them to work towards the standards that you have set, set the goals and put an incentive program in place now. Don’t wait for the annual employee review to either recognize or reprimand employees how your employees serve your customers -generally that may be too late.

Delivering little rewards more often is a far better method and works very well for reinforcing desired behavior. Provide verbal recognition frequently. Tell your employees what they are doing the right when you see them providing good service. It’s much more motivational. And do it in front of the other employees so they get the idea too.

Pass out little rewards on the spot for small efforts and bigger rewards for efforts that are above and beyond your expectations. Your customers like to feel appreciated, and so do employees. You must reinforce the importance of good customer service by acknowledging and rewarding your employees effort to meet your standards. When your employees understand and offer the level of customer service that both you and your customers expect, and then are rewarded for it, everyone wins. Your employees get in the habit of and strive to offer great customer service. Your customers are happier because they are treated well. And both benefit you and your company.
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About The Author:

Sally Liddicoat is a Wife, Mother, Speaker and the Founder & CEO of AttaBoy! Solutions. Her goal is to help businesses increase sales, generate ongoing referrals, strengthen relationships and create loyal customers and employees through appreciation marketing. Throughout this blog you can sign up for updates, news, special offers, discounts and more. So take a look around, leave a comment or two and enjoy.

Contact Sally