STOP Losing Customers!

Hey friends and fans, Ryan Dohrn here. Coming up in this month's episode, we're gonna focus in on your listener questions. First one comes from David up in Minneapolis saying, hey Ryan, I'm being told everything's too expensive these days. What should I do? Another listener question from Raven down in Florida. She wants to sell with success stories but doesn't have any. What should she do? And then our main topic this month in this episode is going to be retention. What are the things that you could do, 3 main things that you could do to keep customers for a lifetime? Because we all know if we can keep those customers around, we don't need to have quite as many coming in because our business will be really robust and strong. All that and so much more coming up on this month's episode. Live from the Braintree Media Studios, this is the Ryan Dohrn Business Show. Hey friends, welcome back to the program. This month we're focusing in on customer retention. And now before you say, oh, I know everything about that, I offer great customer service, that really, friends, is not what customer retention is about. Retention are the things that you do above and beyond customer service. Everybody expects great customer service. What are we going to do that's big, bad, and better? Because I feel like we spend so much time focusing on the pipeline end of the funnel, not enough time on what are we doing to stop customers from leaving beyond customer service. I find that like most organizations love to talk about growth, and in almost every conversation, Growth means brand new business, new accounts, new logos, new opportunities in the pipeline. And I'm not here to disagree with that. I'm just saying that on the other side of the pipe is retention and stopping losing customers from the other end. New business, I mean, it absolutely matters, but if we cannot keep the customers we already have, you don't really have a growth strategy. You have what most people would refer to as just a standard revolving door. So according to Bain and Company and their research, increasing customer retention by just 5% could increase your profits by as much as 95%. And that is not a marginal improvement, friends. It's significant financial boost and a shift that you should really be paying attention to. Here's what I found: in nearly every industry, the cost of acquiring a new customer far exceeds the cost of retaining an existing one. Yet most sales organizations will devote the majority of their time and training to to prospecting. I know that's what I'm hired to do most when I come to all of your offices or your meetings to train your teams. New business, new business, new business, Ryan. We don't spend much time in retention. As a matter of fact, after working with sales teams across many industries, about 15 different industries— now I know that, um, I've— you know that I focus mostly on digital and software development and things like that, but I've seen this imbalance, friends. It plays out repeatedly. Repeatedly, teams chase the next opportunity while assuming that their existing customers will more than likely just kind of renew and stick around. The reality is that customers don't stay because you're friendly or responsive. They stay because they believe that you're giving them meaningful value or delivering them meaningful results. So I think that it kind of breaks down into 3 main areas: effective retention conversations, vendor versus partner and kind of a little bit of a mind shift there. And then recognizing that retention, friends, it really fuels the strength that you have within your sales organization. So let's focus in on the first area, effective retention conversation. Retention conversations should focus on outcomes, not really transactions. A lot of my folks in the media business, it's you want to spend a dollar and then they want to make $50, and that conversion just doesn't make sense. So instead of reviewing the features that you present to somebody or reminding customers what they've purchased, what I want to do is I want to really reconnect with relationships and really be looking, what can I do to build relationships? And a lot of that is recognizing what problems am I solving for customers. When I can clearly articulate the problems that I'm solving for customers, the solution, the results, the decision to continue with us becomes a lot more logical. If they really— if we can get in alignment with what does a great outcome actually look like. Now, the other thing you got to pay attention to, friends, is a lot of times though, the outcome that a customer wants is like wackadoodle. It's, it's like, what? Where in the world did that come from? So you do need to get in alignment of not only the problem, but then what problems are you solving for the customer so that you can really drill in on what does the end result actually look like. Now, the other thing that we do, so the second thing, so the first thing is effective retention conversations on solid, solid outcomes. And that might just not be the number of sofas being sold after an advertisement runs. Okay? It could be a shift from, hey, what's your quarterly mindset versus a daily mindset? Right? The second thing, though, is I've made a subtle shift, a mindset shift, vendor versus partner. Now, I think that could be semantical. Sometimes we have these part, quote unquote, partner conversations. But are they really a partner? Is that just a word that we're using? Because like, I go way out of the way for my life partner, my wife of 30-some years. I go way out of my way for her. Now, am I going to go that far out of my way for a client? I mean, maybe, perhaps depends upon the request or circumstance or situation. But don't just say partner to say partner. I mean, partners really take care of each other in some pretty big and profound ways. Are you doing that? You know, there's an important mind shift that's involved there. Don't, don't take that too lightly. Vendors are replaced, okay? Strategic partners, those are retained. Vendors focus on what they sell, okay? Partners focused on where the customer is going. That difference shows up— difference, it shows up in the questions you ask, like what are their growth priorities for the year, uh, what pressures are they trying to navigate, What are— where are they investing their resources? Is it only in us? Is it in others? Are they being cautious? If they're not, why are they not being? If they are, why are they being? You need to make sure that your customers really feel understood, understood like the way that you would actually treat a business partner. Because my gut tells me, and I, I think you would agree, trust remains one of the strongest drivers of long-term relationships when people trust you. And a lot of that is honesty. A lot of it is underpromising and then overdelivering. A lot of it though, friends, is being present, not just always checking in on somebody. I'm checking in on you. A lot of it is, what can I do to help you? One of my best outreaches is, how can I help? Thank you for your business. How can I help? Or, hey, I'm sure there's perfect customers you're looking for. Give me that profile. I want to help you find, you know, those folks. Now, the third thing though, friends, that I think is often overlooked. So our very first thing was Effective retention conversations and hosting those. The second thing was a mind shift, like, are you a vendor or are you a partner? It's a distinct difference, and we don't want partnerships just to be a word like, you're my partner. The third thing though is, do you have a clear retention process? I mean, are you budgeting for that process? Good retention requires a process that's mandated, that's budgeted for, and that's followed up on. It should never depend on like your memory or a last conversation that you had. High-performing organizations, they establish a very clear cadence that includes scheduled check-ins with clients, handwritten thank-you notes, a certain level of gifting that's personalized, inviting people to events, being very proactive way, way before retention conversations happen. When you— if you're at the end of the year and you're just now talking retention or just then talking retention. I've already been talking about it for months. Harvard Business Review had a really great article. You should check it out. All kinds of great stuff there from HBR. They reported that reducing customer effort, okay, is one of the strongest predicators of loyalty. In, in practical terms, what that means is making it easier for a customer to stay. I mean, make it really easy. So a lot of you, you know, you're trying to raise prices every year. Okay? So if you're gonna raise price, are you also gonna raise value? Or is value gonna stay the same and you're just raising the price? Like, billing should be very straightforward and super easy. All your expectations should be aligned. When you follow up with people, it should be easy. Your reporting should be easy to understand. You should have a process. Like, I don't send just reports, right, with a PDF. I pull the PDF on the screen. I record on the screen. I talk them through what the report looks like because I know they're probably not going to set up a meeting with me to do that, but they might watch a video. In the end, friends, if you've got a process, which was our 3rd idea for you, and you know I love the rule of 3, and you've really done a shift from vendor to partner and you really mean it, and you're having effective conversations, friends, then what that leads us to is a general understanding that when you retain people well, it fuels strength, not only with you, But also with— also within the organization. But a lot of you, you don't even budget for retention, but you do budget for great customer service, right? So you should be budgeting for it, you know, for retention. What percentage is that? I don't know. But imagine if you could take 1 point of an increase in your cost of sales, which would increase your retention ability by, say, 2 or 3 or 4%. That makes a lot of sense, right? A subtle shift just in the way you budget. Retention deserves its own emphasis. I do believe that retention is a revenue strategy, because if you stop people from leaving, you don't need as many people coming in the front door. If you've got less people going out the back door, try to get that. What is the number? Try to get that retention number. Like, I don't want to lose more than like 15% of customers. Some of you might be 5%. It really depends upon your circumstance. It's this, friends, it's not a soft metric, and it shouldn't really be an afterthought. This is, friends, a financial strategy. Lifetime value. What is the lifetime value of your client? It reduces acquisition costs, creates predictable revenue. New sales are awesome, and we should always be focusing on pipeline management. We talk a lot about it here on the podcast and on my YouTube channel and on the Sales App. But organizations that really understand retention is a revenue strategy almost always beat those that just kind of leave it to the salespeople. Now, last but definitely not least, friends, never forget, if sales was easy, if retention was easy, everybody'd be doing it, friends, and they're not. We're not crazy at all. This is a great career, friends. It'll feed your family for a lifetime. I just need you to pay attention to 2 big things: bringing in new business, keep it rocking, But then also do what you need to do to make sure you're not losing people on the other end of the pipe. If we focus all of our energy on acquisition and nothing on retention, pretty soon, friends, we're gonna have to really be fighting on one side because the other side, a floodgate has been opened. And I definitely don't want to see that strategy deployed in any of your conversations. Friends, reach out to me if you need help with all these things. Love to come to your sales meetings. and motivate your teams to performance. We can do this if we pay attention to it and it becomes a part of our total sales process. All right, friends, we got your listener questions coming up next. Hey, friends and fans, you've been hearing me talk about my sales coaching app, and thanks to my friends over at Passion.io, that app is up and ready to go. So when you go to the iTunes Store or the Google Play Store, this is what you're going to see is you just search for the Sales Coach, My Sales Coach, or Ryan Dohrn. And then you're going to see daily motivational tips on your phone. And so this is where we've got all kinds of daily tips for you. You're going to get 14 for free, so you'll be able to watch on your phone. Like, this is a video I did on the secret sauce of sales. Then what you also have access to in the pro version is you have access to strategy reboots where you can actually go and watch all of the training that I've ever done online. Like, here is one on stop being ghosted by clients using video. Uh, in your sales process. Another thing that's pretty cool about the sales app is you get access to all these podcasts also, friends, in one place so you don't have to go and find it anyplace else. So that's in My Sales Coach over on the iTunes Store, the App Store, or also in the Google Play Store as well. Hey friends and fans, welcome back. We're answering your listener questions sent in to ryan@ryandohrn.com. Love to get your listener questions and viewer questions. Keep them coming. If we don't respond, we don't reply, they did not receive— we didn't receive them, friends. I take great pride in responding to all of your emails, whether I'll write an email back or record you a video, or someone from the team will always get back to you. So if we've not answered your questions here on the podcast, on the YouTube channel, or in person, send your question again, ryan@ryandohrn.com. All right, first question as promised from David up in MSP, Minneapolis-St. Paul. All right, Ryan, I'm hearing from everybody, and I mean everybody, that we're too expensive. I don't know what to do. It's my biggest objection. Please help. So David, it is not uncommon in the least bit for people to— for me to hear that that's a number one objection: no budget and too expensive. Now, those are 2 completely different things, so let's talk about too expensive. I've got 3 things— imagine that— I've got 3 things that I would like to share with you as it relates to too expensive. All right, the first is compared to what? Now, I don't think you want to say compared to what. I think you want to make sure you preface it or couch it as, I hear what you're saying, financial considerations are always in play. Now, don't say because of the economy, you know, just say financial considerations are always in play. So when you say we're too expensive, that must mean that you've compared us to something else or to someone else. If you don't mind me asking, who have you compared us to? Who are you comparing us to? And why do you feel we're too expensive compared to someone else? Now, if they've not compared you to anybody, okay, then that will answer that question. Then it'll lead to, well, not too expensive, no budget, which that's a different— that's a different objection. The other thing, the second thing on too expensive is if they say it's too expensive, you have not done a good job as a salesperson in explaining the value that they're going to receive. Most people When you explain value, they typically don't say it's too expensive. That means the value that you're giving to me, Ryan, is not worthy of the money you want me to give you. This exchange doesn't make sense. It seems off balance or too expensive. All right, so that's the second thing I would drill in, in the value piece. Back yourself up and make sure you're being really clear on the value you bring to the occasion. And the third thing is you're not fixing a problem. If someone says it's too expensive, You're not fixing a problem for them. So in the process of selling them, you've not identified the problem that your solution fixes for them. Because if you can fix a problem, normally people will find the money. That goes back to the value piece as well. So really, David, those are the 3 main things. Compared to what? You're too expensive compared to what? Second thing is value. What have you done to make sure the value is worth the exchange of price? And then the third thing is People will find money if you're truly fixing a problem. Now, they might mean no budget. Okay, so once you identify these 3 things, drill into them. It could be no budget. No budget for me then is when you say you have no budget, does that mean you have no budget for me or you have no budget at all? Because we've identified this problem, we've established this value, we've compared you to— you've compared me to others. So no budget is a little bit of a different objection. Now, one of the things, David, and everybody that listens and watches, you should have is an objection cheat sheet. Like I've got over here, I've got a little cheat sheet, okay, that I've got written. That's when I'm working on a new project. Now, I know most of my projects. I don't need an objections cheat sheet, but every organization should have one, a script so that you can handle objections effectively. And then I'd encourage you to use ChatGPT or systems like Udemy or whatever to practice and role play. This out. But David, I hope that's helpful to you, and get to work on it. You'll be able to handle this, David. I have a ton of faith in you. Now friends, don't forget, these objections we get on a regular basis, I cover almost all of these in our sales coaching app. So if you haven't downloaded it yet, you get 14 lessons for free, you get 7 days for free. Go and check it out on the Google Play Store or the Apple Store. Search for Ryan Dohrn, the sales Coach. Download that app for free. Several hundred people are on the app and are getting some great success from it, so you should check it out as well. All right, next question sent in to ryan@ryandohrn.com. Thanks for those again. Uh, Raven down in Florida— Raven in Florida says, Ryan, I believe in your success story selling model. The only thing is I don't have any success stories to use. What do I do? So, Raven, it's probably that you personally maybe might not have any because maybe you're new or you haven't had an opportunity to sell yet. But typically, the company you're working for is going to almost always have some level of success unless it's a brand new product. So let's talk about that for a second. If you happen to be a person that's selling a brand new product, whether it's a digital solution, a software, a brand new enhancement to a product you're currently offering, what you— a lot of times you need to do is you need a test case scenario. So I go to my boss, I say I need some success stories to sell with. Can I go to Company A or Company B offering them some kind of deal so that I can get a testimonial from them? We can work with them and we can pull some information out of them from a marketing perspective. Typically that's not the case. A lot of times with salespeople don't think they have success stories, and they do because they always relying on their own success stories. Now let's just say that I have Brandon over here that sold a bunch of business. I can use his success stories to potentially sell myself forward. Let's just say that I've got Julie over here, and Julie's got a bunch of success stories. I should be able to use her success stories to sell until I have mine. Here's the other thing though. Sometimes the success stories that a Brandon might have, or that a Julie might have, they might even be better than the success stories that, that I have. And so I might want to use them forever. Friends, there's nothing wrong with using examples of other salespeople within your organization. Now, you do want to kind of talk about it, make sure people are cool with that. But keep in mind, for me, success stories don't always need to be number of widgets sold. Like in my business of advertising, everybody wants to know, well, if I run an ad, how many clicks am I going to get? Well, it's not as much about the clicks as it is about the end goal of sales, right, or total number of leads. So when I'm sharing with somebody, I might want to say, this is Company A. They're similar to you. They're not the exact same company. Here's the results that they received from us, and here's what I think you could potentially expect as well. Keep in mind, friends, in a world of sort of economic all over the place, right? The economy's up and down, and gas is up and down, all that kind of happy stuff. Keep in mind, this isn't like something that's new. It's been going on for quite some time. So we just have to understand that we need success stories to reduce risk. When people are risk-averse, Success stories are the fastest way, Raven, to reduce risk is by sharing about other people's success that they've had with your company. So Raven, you know, I don't know your exact circumstance, your exact scenarios, but I hope that is helpful to all of you. Now the other thing you could do is you could make some assumptions. If you're brand new, you could say, okay, based upon this, this, and this, this is what we assume would potentially happen. You could adjust your pricing based upon those assumptions. You could say, if we bring you X number of leads, it's X price. If we bring you more than that, it's this price. And there's a bunch of different ways to kind of scale into it. But Raven, I mean, I hear this on a very regular basis. So, see if you can't find some other members, colleagues of your team, find their success stories, and see if you can't leverage those as well. People don't remember statistics, friends, but they do remember success stories. All right, keep your questions coming. ryan@ryandohrn.com. All right, friends, that's a wrap on this show for this month. I hope that revenue retention strategy was helpful to all of you. A big thank you to David and to Raven for sending in their questions to ryan@ryandohrn.com. And even though my coaching schedule is extremely full, uh, where I really love and where I can really be helpful to you is coming and motivating your teams at your national sales meeting or at your national sales conferences. It's not as expensive as you might think. To bring in a top-notch speaker to get your team pumped up for the year. So reach out to me over at ryandohrn.com. All right, friends, God bless you. See you out on the street. Get out there and sell something. And never forget, if sales was easy, everybody'd be doing it, and they're not. We're not crazy, friends. This is a great career. It'll feed your family for a lifetime. Hey, do me a favor, go over to the Apple Store or go to the Google Play Store and download my sales app. Search for the Sales Coach or for Ryan Dohrn, you're going to get 14 days for free and another 7 days bonus, uh, right now. If you can't figure out where to download it, head over to ryandohrn.com. All right, get out there and sell something. We'll see you next week.