Andre Coakley’s Proven Strategy to Keep Credit Repair Customers Coming Back

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In five, four, three, two, one. Hey, Credit Heroes, it's Daniel Rosen here, and as we gear up to kick off an amazing new year, I want to share a really special video with you. This video is from our Credit Repair Expo a few years ago, and if you missed it, let me fill you in. Hundreds of Greta heroes from all across the US they came together for an event like no other. I had so much fun meeting so many of you, hearing your stories and celebrating your wins. But this event wasn't just about learning strategies or growing businesses. No, it was about changing lives. A big moment was a talk from Andre Coakley, a Credit Repair millionaire who knows how to build a business that lasts. His advice on retaining customers is a total game changer. And the best part is it's just as powerful now as it was back then. And today, I'm sharing Andre's talk with you. So get ready. It's going to inspire you to start the new year strong and take your business to the next level. So you better stick around. My name is Daniel Rosen, and welcome to Credit Repair Business Secrets.

Before I introduce myself, I'm going to talk about what I'm going to talk about today and is what is better than acquiring one customer or new customers? Right. The answer isn't acquiring two customers. It's actually retaining customers. All right, so a lot of times, a lot of businesses that I've mentored, a lot of times they're telling me what they. How many customers they've gained. They didn't really actually tally how many customers they lost. Does that make sense? So everybody talks about the new girlfriend. They don't talk about the ex girlfriend. So when we're talking about customers and acquiring customers, did you know it's seven times more expensive to acquire a new customer than to take care of the existing customer into your actual process? A lot of times we don't do that. A lot of times we actually are so busy trying to get the new leads in that we're not nurturing the relationship. So retain what you got, and you won't have to be going through all that stress. The other statistic I like to give, 89% of shoppers have stopped buying from a business after they've had a poor customer experience. All right, so how many times have you broke up with someone just because their breath was stink? All right, that's a customer experience or a relationship experience. So what we're trying to say is anything can throw off the dynamics of the relationship that makes sense. All right, 55% of your customers are willing to share out more money. The simple fact that they want a better experience out of your business, out of your cycle, out of your process. So this is something very important to think about. And did you know that consumers who are actually repeat consumers of your business are spending almost roughly, give or take, roughly about 55% more revenue into the business because they already know, like and trust you. So a little bit about me, what separates my company or everybody talks about their niche in the business? I feel our niche is customer experience, customer relationships between our different business platforms. We have over 500 five star Google reviews, all right? And what that does is very big for my business. So let's say you're shopping online, right? You see a ladies. You see a dress that's being sold on goo on Amazon. This dress is being sold for $50. Right. The problem is this dress is being sold in China from a China distributor. However, they have no reviews. All right. Secondly, you see a second dress. This dress is being sold in the US that seller has 300 five star reviews. But however, that dress is $99, not $49. It's twice as much. Which dress would you purchase? You would pay twice as much for the same dress. So what it tells you is we all want a quantified purpose of doing business with somebody. Does that make sense? So that means you actually want to quantify. What we're going to talk about is coming up with a matrix and how you can actually scale your business to kind of figure out exactly what you're making per customer, how long they're staying into your process and how if they're actually churning out of your, out of your system. Let me back up. Let me talk about my great team right here. I love these people. These people help me pay my bills. Right? All right. What ethnicity are these individuals? And I say that for a reason. What ethnicity are all these individuals? Diverse. Right. All right, what's the purpose and why am I telling you that? Why do you think that? Ultra competency. Okay. At the end of the day, an alien wants to do business with the alien. I tell people all that. Does that make sense? Right. People want to do business who actually know and look like them in some capacities. And I'm not trying to try to make this a racial thing. It's nothing about that. I think they. I'm trying to actually have reliability to my customers and clients at all given times. All right. This is the process of finding new customers. What's the process of keeping old, old customers, is it super simple? We don't like that process. It's too simple for us. Not enough analytics does that make sense? All right, so we're going to define customer retention. Customer retention is defined as the ability of a business or brand to retain customers over a certain period of time. How many reasons do you need to lose a customer? One. All right, you can do 99% of the job, right, and have one bad experience. So they got one bad experience. Now they're actually churning out your system. I dated a girl, right? Very nice woman, but her breath. Her breath. Oh, my goodness. All right. However, they. At the end of the day, that is a. An experience, right? So that one experience actually wind up just railroading the whole relationship. Who knows about service recovery paradox? Does anybody know what that is? This is a process where a lot of people don't understand. Sometimes you can have a customer going through your system, and something can actually go not to their expectations, but yet you can recover from that and make that even an influencer from your business. How many times have you dated someone, right? Or not even dated. You got. You were getting to know someone when you first met them, you hated them. Does that make sense? Then all of a sudden, something happened, and, you know, they kind of let you know that they're not who you thought they were. But then after the fact, you like them even more than you even hated them in the original standpoint. Okay, so that's service recovery paradox. If you see the clients with the dotted line, right, the slash line, those are customers who are going through your process who have no service failure. This is your average customer. This means everything has gone copacetic. In your actual process, do you see, roughly in the mid mark, midway mark, how it kind of bumps up? They kind of trust you a little bit more. But if you look at the service recovery paradox section, that's that purple line. Do you see the customers almost on the same playing field? They have a problem with service. Do you see how their trust in your system drops drastically? But do you see how it actually winds up compelling and actually propelling above your customers who never even had a problem with your system? So what I'm trying to say is just because they have an issue with it doesn't mean you can't recover. So let's. Let's get that. Let's get that straight right now. And some of the customers who I've had the biggest issues with are the biggest influencers for my business. Biggest influencers. Why? Because we hashed everything out. And you know what? We kind of got the egos out the way and we kind of know exactly who's who at this particular point. This is not Andre talking. This is the Harvard Business Review. All right? Reports that increasing customer retention by 5% increase your actual revenue anywhere between 25 to 95%. Just that simple. All right? And if you look at the line, right, if you look at the gray line, this is a business that's actually just retaining 5% of its customers at a constant basis versus if you look at the purple line, these are customers. This is the business that is retaining 5% more customers than the customer than the business that's actually just retaining at a 5% steady income. So you always want to be making sure that you are retaining your customers, taking care of your customers, that in your cycle. Why? Because they're going to spend more revenue with you and actually they're going to refer more customers to you and they're going to be more loyal to your actual process and your program. Now, I know there's a lot on this chart, right? It looks real busy, but this is how you need to understand where your customer at and what their actual mind frame is in each stage of the journey of your business. Does everybody see that? That strange stranger character there? Right? This is a prospect that experiencing and expressing symptoms of a problem or a need. All right? So if you go straight down and you look right below that, you see awareness. That customer is in an awareness stage in your actual business cycle during that time. If you look at where it says content focus right below that, where the 55%, 50, 55% of your content needs to focus on understanding their need. You need to be understanding their need. So that's not at that particular point, it's like a woman saying, oh my gosh, I just broke up with my boyfriend. And the guy who's on the other line is like, you know what? I could do better than him. That's not the time to be saying that, brother. Does that make sense? You need to be like, oh, baby, you know what? I understand. I had a girl who broke my heart one time. You know what? She was trash. And you know what? That other guy, he's trash just like her. Does that make sense? Right? You need to parallel with the problem. Don't say, oh, I'm the best credit repair company. Oh, I get those things removed off your credit report today. Turning him off. That's the woman who's saying, oh, yes, I just broke up with my boyfriend and you're coming up to him and say, yeah, baby, welcome to my bed. You skipped a whole lot of levels in between. Does that make sense? You went straight from first base all the way to a grand slam. It don't work that way. All right, so there's levels of engagement. The second level is going to be visitor. They're in the consideration stage. During that consideration stage, you should be asking 30% of your content. Should we know how to solve your problem? Only at that particular. You're just telling you know how to solve it. You're not telling them you're going to solve it. I just know how to solve it. You know what, I went through a relationship before now. You know what, it didn't feel good to be hurt. I didn't say, you know what, we going to sleep together in three more weeks where that goes. All right, the purchase stage is. The purchase stage is when the actual customer that that visitor is. Going from a visitor to a passive lead means you have just captured their information. A lead is worth $18. All right, when we're talking about a lead is worth just getting that name email address is worth $18. How many people buy leads? How many people buy leads? I know a lot of y' all buying more leads than not closing them. How many people buying leads and not closing them? Let me put it that way. All right. It happens, right? So at the day you're buying someone else's contact information, why aren't you collecting all that contact information? Why couldn't that actually be a lead that you sell to someone else? I'm not trying to tell you to sell that lead at the day. I'm just trying to tell you just to sit in front of that person is a 18 value price point to capture their time. Does that make sense? Right? So that's that in that purchase stage and I see that, you see that whole touch points aspect of it where it's kind of doing that thing. That's how you should be marketing to that person. During that actual cycle of that phase. They go from an active lead, that's retention. Then they go to a customer, Then they go to an advocate. Advocate is the ultimate goal. What does advocate mean? They know like and trust you and they are actually sending people to your actual promoting your business. You want to have influencers for your business. All right, so let me tell you this, all right? Why is it important to have influencer? Let's say I'm a baker, I bake cakes for a living. I come up to you and I say, you know, What? We're standing on the corner. You're on the street corner. I say, hey, you know what? I'm Andre Cokely. I'm the world's greatest chef. I need you to taste this cake. It's chocolate cake. You're like, number one, sir, I don't know where your hands been. Number two, I just don't trust everybody. And number three, I normally like to eat from places where I know what the kitchen looks like. Does that make sense? All right, so that's scenario one. You probably would not be too receptive to my business model with that particular structure. Right? But how about your girlfriend, boyfriend, family member, loved one, cousin comes up to you, says, oh, my gosh, you got to chase this chocolate cake. It is slamming. You just ate my nasty ass cake. Does that make sense? All right, so at the end of the day, it's a lot harder for you to market your service to a direct contact versus having somebody else market for you. Let them be the icebreaker. All right, so just like we were talking before, you want to give. You want to have them know, like, and trust you. When should you start focusing on customer retention? You should start focusing on customer retention, not necessarily from day one. And that's the thing that we normally think about. If you have. If you have no clients, how many clients are you retaining? There's an actual time where you can't be thinking about customer retention if you don't have customers. All right, so if you're just starting off and you have no sales, 100% of your business should be on acquisition, not retention. Okay? Gaining traction. One to five sales a week. That means 15% of your effort should be towards retention, 85% towards actually obtaining that client. If you're consistent, that means you're actually getting at least one sale a day. 70% should be acquisition. 30% should be retention. Established, 10 sales per day. You probably, you know, a full fledged firm at that point. You should be focusing on the 5050 model at that point. All right, and the well established establishment, 40% sales, 60% retention. Why? Because at that 40%, 60. That 60% is saying the process already works. And you're actually causing the people who've already gone through your system to be an influencer for your business. All right, so now we're going to get into the math part. Who likes math? Who knows how to find a vector to a B vector? Please raise your hand because I'm going to need you for one second. I know we got some math majors in here. I don't Know how to do it either, but I just put that up there because I thought it would confuse the hell out of y'. All. All right, so, like, everybody, like, man, what are we doing? Okay. All right, so what we're going to talk about is categorizing matrix retention. We're going to break it down into four categories. Bringing customers back, maximizing revenue, tracking retention effort, and measuring loyalty. You're going to get all the information we need. So the first matrix we're going to talk about is bringing back customers. The root of any retention strategy is to bring customers back. That makes sense. Marketing retention helps you bring back every single customer to the next purchase. All right, we don't want to leave any man standing. So the first matrix we're going to talk about is your customer churn rate. Does anybody deal with customer churn rate on a daily basis in their office? If you don't, please say no. Oh, no, all of us are millionaire. I can go home. I'm going to ask you. If you don't do customer churn matrix in your office, please say no. I know you don't do it. I know a lot of us don't do it. I mentor companies. I mentor. In the last six months, I talked to 200 credit repair companies. Majority of the companies I talked to could tell me how many customers came into their system. None of them could tell me how many they lost. How many customers did you get last month? 53. How many did you lose? 63. Did you know you are negative 9 customers? You see where I'm going with this, right? Nobody counts the ex girlfriends. We only count the girlfriends. Well, I got five girlfriends, bro. You got 500 ex girlfriends. So customer churn. All right, so this is how we work this out to get the actual customer churn rate. Does this make sense? Do y' all see how this formula works? You know, I gave the answer first, and then I kind of did it backwards and I showed the formula. Okay, so to get the actual customer churn rate, you're going to take the number of customers at the beginning of the month. Based off of this study or the chart, how many customers do we have at the beginning of the month? So if we take 150 minus 140. So we're going to take that 10, and we're going to divide it by 150. Does anybody know that math? I don't worry about it. I did it for you. All right, so what we're going to do here, this is the math. So we have the 150 minus the 140. And that left at 10. You see the orange 10 up top, and you see the 150 clients that we started with. So when we break down that actual ratio, 0.67. All right? And then we multiply that times a hundred because we want to get that into a percentage. And what was our actual customer churn rate at this particular model? 6.7%. Okay, so what, what is this telling me? 6.7% of my customers fell out my cycle that particular month. Okay. So don't be so concerned with what's coming in. Also be concerned with falling out. All right? You're putting hole, you're putting water in the bucket, but your bucket has a hole in the bottom. You're not filling up the bucket. So when we talk about your customer churn rates, 9 out of 10 customers begin shopping with a competitor because of that poor or bad customer experience. And you need to be setting up a customer centric loyalty program, which means it's pretty much about the customers, where you're giving them incentives for being in your program and also referring you business. All right, all right, so the next one is maximizing revenue. How are we going to maximize revenue? This is what we call the average payment value. Average payment values, you need to know exactly how much you average per customer per payment. So what this helps you do. This allows you to be able to scale your business to be able to know exactly based off of how many payments you take, an estimate of what you should be forecasting in the future of what you're making. So why is average payment important? Because you're a money maker. Literally, this is how much money you actually make. All right? And it measures the amount of money that a customer spends per purchase. So to get your average payment value, we're going to take your total revenue. What was the total revenue here? And we're going to divide it by what, 1,000, which is the total number of orders. And I broke this down in a yearly basis. However, you can break down these increments in monthly basis, quarterly, you know, every, you know, every six months, however you want to do it. So we're going to take the 150,000 total revenue. We're going to divide that by the 1,000. This is the actual breakdown of it, how it works. So we have the $150,000 total revenue. We have $1,000 monthly total payments. So what's our average payment value even on the paper delete model? All right, you need to know what's the average ticket of a Customer. Because on the paper delete model, you can have a client to have 10 things removed off a credit report and they'll go to another client. We had nothing removed off the credit report. That's a totally big scaling difference. One client was worth a $500 invoice or ticket. The other client was worth nothing. Don't get me wrong, I had two clients, but how much did I average between the two clients? 250 bucks. Does that make sense? All right, so it's very important to understand these matrixes. If you're trying to grow your business, please stop trying to grow your business. And you don't know what your customer's worth to you, it's not worth it. I can tell you that. How about I could tell you at one point, I probably spent a million to make a million. My customer had more money than me at the end of the day. So average payment value. Keep in mind one thing about this margin. It doesn't reflect how much money you're generating and you're putting into that customer. It only says what you're getting from the customer. So if you spend $150 to get that customer and you're only making $150 a month, that first month from that customer is washed. So now we're going to talk about tracking retention efforts. All right, how are we tracking our retention? How are we tracking how customers are staying into our program? And also it breaks it down to what customer value is, what's the value of our customer? So when we're talking about the value of a customer, what we're going to take is we're going to take that average purchase order and then we're actually going to multiply that by how long the customer is into our system or into our funnel. Does that make sense? So to break this down right now, this actual equation or matrix has multiple steps. It's a three step equation, but it's super simple. We already know how to calculate the average payment value. We're going to take the total revenue and divide that by the total payments and we're going to get the average payment value. Then we're actually going to move to the second function, which is the payment frequency. Payment frequency is how often are they staying into our cycle as your clients. This is a big difference. For your clients to stay into your cycle for four months versus seven months. This is a big difference. Four months between five months is a difference. Four months between five, four and a half months is a different. That extra half a month can be Actually more revenue that you're not factoring into your bottom line. All right, so when we're actually talking about calculating the customer value, this is actually going to be the breakdown of how we do it. All right? We're going to take the total revenue, which is $150,000. We're going to divide that by the total payments, which is a thousand dollars, and that's going to give us the $150 for the average payment value. Then we're going to take the payment frequency, which is $1,000, which the payment frequency is taking the total number of payments, which is a thousand. Divide that by 200. And what do we get with that? 5. All right, so if this was your payment model, if you're making $150 average per client and their customer is staying into your system for only five months, your average client has a value of how much, how much did you pay to acquire this client? Is this, is this is the amount you pay to acquire this client? In this, in this number is the amount that you pay to process this client, pay your staff, pay for postage, pay for mailing, including that number. So stop telling people you make $750 a client, all right? If you're spending roughly about $150, you know, to process, to do all this thing, you're not making $750 a client. You might only be making 600 bucks. So the last matrix we're actually going to actually cover is measuring loyalty. How long are they staying into our program? All right, and this is your customer retention rate. How are we retaining customers, and why is customer retention important? Customer retention is important because it lets you know amount of customers that are staying with staying with you over time. The other matrix were how many were actually churning out of your system. Now, this is actually reverse engineering and saying, well, how many are we retaining over a period of time? All right, and why is this important? Because this matrix gives you the clearest indication of how well your retained retention tools are working. All right? And it's very important to kind of figure that out. So with this particular matrix, it starts off with number of customers at the end of the month, how many customers we had at the end of the month. And it says we lost eight customers, started one 107, we gained 21. So that 107 plus 21. These is that 128, but then we lost eight. All right, so let's see if that matrix works. So to plug it in, the ending customers was 120. We had that minus 21, which is the customers that we gained, and we divide that by the original amount of starting customers. So our customer retention rate at this particular Matrix is at 92.5%. That means we're roughly maintaining or keeping roughly 93% or 92.5% of the customers into your cycle. Is that a very good retention ratio? Yes. You don't want retention ratios in our business. I'm going to say less than 80 to 85%. Okay. Don't get me wrong. Your customers are eventually going to age out of your system. They're going to eventually go out of your system. So they're actually going to be reasons why they're going to fall out of your system beyond your control. But if they're going out of your system or they're aging out, you can't control that aspect of it. So pretty much, if you put customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, customer referrals, altogether one conglomerate that should actually contribute to a roughly about a 95% increase in your revenue by touching the same exact amount of customers. That's the only thing that helps me excel. That we actually wind up trying to take take care of our customers or into our program, into our cycle. It's not rocket science. I'm not trying to find a new relationship. I just want to take care of the relationship. I've already established. It's a lot easier. Who's been married more than 10 years? Who's been married longer than 20 years? 30. You standing up high? Where's your wife? She here? Huh? I need to take a picture of you. Like the way you jumped up. I thought she was here. You better stand up. All right, all right. That's customer retention. You deal with somebody for 35 years. Oh, yeah. You retaining them real well. Does that make sense? I'm Andre Coakley. I appreciate your time. Keep changing lives.

Wasn't that awesome? We love Andre. He is one of our favorite credit heroes.

And.

And he has so many awesome tips for growing your business. And if you'd like to improve your credit score and discover how to earn extra income. Repairing credit for others, check out my brand new Start Repairing Credit challenge. Doors are closing soon and it is completely free. So sign up right now@startrepairingcredit.com so take care, credit hero, and keep changing lives.