Are your customers leaving without saying goodbye?
By Dick Rossman
Neil Sedaka said “Breaking up is hard to do” but he obviously didn’t know the printing business. For your customers, leaving you is very easy — unfortunately — and they do it with little fanfare: they just stop answering your calls and find another printer somewhere else. In today’s world, customer loyalty is a diminishing concept and there are plenty of printing press cylinders around to make it easy for print buyers to move their business to your competition.

When was the last time you looked at who you are doing business with today compared to who you were doing business with six months ago? Every printing company owner and sales manager knows that retaining customers is one of the keys to growing sales, that it costs five times more to add a new customer than to keep an existing one. But how many of us actually measure our retention on a regular basis and then act on the results?

The first step is to create a KPI (Key Performance Indicators) called customer retention and measure it on a quarterly basis. The simplest way to do this is to look at which companies you did business with each period and compare. A better way is to create a sales-adjusted retention chart, adding your customers’ sales volumes to your information, so you look at the amount of new business gained or the value of old customers lost. And an even better way, if you have the data, would be to generate a profit-adjusted retention rate so you track the profitability of each account that you are retaining or losing.

By reviewing this information regularly with your sales managers and account execs, at a minimum you learn where your business is coming from and where it is no longer. And you are in a position to take some directed action to maintain a profitable account, rescue it from its demise or resurrect it from oblivion.

Besides continuing sales, there are several other benefits of the long standing customer that should be taken into account. First, the longer a customer does business with you, the more customer referrals are sent your way. The comfort
factor of doing business with you makes it easy for them to recommend your company to their peers.

And second, ‘regular’ customers are usually more profitable than infrequent ones. They understand the value that you are providing to them, are willing to pay more for that value, and are less responsive to price appeals from your competition. Long-standing customers provide more business to you that is less price sensitive. Isn’t that worth fighting for today?

Keeping profitable clients
So the obvious question is how do we keep those profitable, repeat buyers in our camp and not lose them to our competition? Well, the first way is to understand that your customers are not just companies, they are people. Yes it is Acme Healthcare that is paying your invoices but it is Jane from Arlington who is your customer. So it is her that you must communicate with and teach, and whose business you must understand.

Your account execs must learn what makes her tick when it comes to both how she wants to do business with you and how she does business within her company. Do you understand what her company does, how they do it and what her role is in her company? Who does she report to and what are their expectations of her? Do you know how you can always make her look good? And how can you make sure that she always wants to do business with you?

One way to keep track of this information is to maintain a database of customer specific information. Keep data on company information, including their major customers, other contacts in the company, trends in their business, and other important information. Also enter specific information about your buyer: career history, home address, birthday, family member names and children’s ages, personal likes and dislikes

And then provide some value or show some interest based on this information. For example, send her articles or press releases about her industry or about one of their customers. Keep her up to date on new print technology that will affect how she does business (i.e. soft proofing), and act on that personal information that you have learned about her with a birthday card or news that her favorite group is coming to Boston. In other words, show her that you care about her and her career.

But all these efforts will be fruitless unless you and your company perform to your customers’ satisfaction. After analyzing numerous surveys taken of print buyers, here’s what they are all looking for from their suppliers and their reps: honesty, sound technical knowledge, constant communication, proactive customer service, education, and competitive pricing. You say that you provide all that, but do you? When was the last time, if ever, that you asked your customers if these benefits are indeed what you are providing them, day in and day out?

Think about developing a formal survey that asks your customers the hard questions about how you and your company are perceived. What do they think about the services that you offer and do they even know of all the solutions that you are capable of providing them? Are you giving them the service they require to keep you as their supplier? What other services would they like you to offer? Ask your questions the right way. Let the responses be anonymous, and you may be surprised by the level of candor in those responses. You can’t put a price on the information that you will gather.

So let’s review. Learn which customers are staying with you and which customers you need to take some action in order to try to retain. Learn more about your customers and how you can provide value to them so they want to do business with you. Learn what all your customers think about you and what you offer to them. And finally, learn how to make breaking up really hard to do.

About the author: Dick Rossman is a management consultant who has been managing printing companies for more than 25 years. He can be contacted at 508-525-0395 or at .