Create and Keep Customers

What is the job of a salesperson? Well, the answer is, and it's the same as the purpose of a company, the answer is to create and keep a customer. Your job is, first of all to create customers and then to keep customers and to keep those customers for life. Now, here's what we know. A resale to a satisfied customer is 10 times easier than a brand new sale. Why? It's because the customer already knows you, likes you, trusts you, has used your product or service, has been satisfied by it. And customers are creatures of habit. They get into a comfort zone. It's much easier for a customer to keep using your services than it is to start off brand new with a brand new salesperson in a brand new company, brand new product or service. So it's easy to keep your customers if you make that a primary goal. What is the big problem? Well, the big problem is what we call relationship or customer entropy. You know, entropy comes from Sir Isaac Newton's second law of thermodynamics, which sounds pretty impressive, but what it means is that in every system, energy runs out. If you roll a ball across the floor, the ball will go fast and then it will slow down and go slower and slower and stop. That often happens with relationships as well. How does entropy set in? In a relationship is we just ignore the person. We work very hard to get the customer. We call them and call them back and everything else. And then we've got the customer, we throw the customer over our shoulder and get on with the rest of our sales life. So you need to develop a system where you get back to your best customers on a regular basis. You give them a call once or twice a month. You call them personally if they're big enough, face to face. You keep in touch with them, you send them things, but don't let anyone else get between you and the customer. Remember that if you can develop a customer and keep that customer for life, you can become one of the highest paid and most successful salespeople in the world.