When people ask me what one mistake I see more often than any other in business, I have a ready answer: falling into the ‘getter’ trap.
Customer retention is more profitable than customer acquisition, and employee retention is cheaper than employee recruitment and retraining. Duh, right?
But where do most businesses spend their time and money? You guessed it: advertising and recruiting. Exactly why this is true I haven’t figured out. I have yet to have one employer or business owner argue with me about the objective truth of the situation, yet their behaviour consistently contradicts this understanding (until they become my clients 
).
If you want to be successful, you have to deal with this. The corrosive costs of acquisition, recruiting, and retraining are well-documented.
Let me suggest from my own experience the most effective ways to become a better keeper.
Customers
- Follow through. What makes customers drift away? Your failure to stay in touch. Your failure to make them feel like they matter more than the immediate sale. You have telephones, electronic newsletters, and social media. There is no excuse for not staying in touch.
- Reward loyalty. Too many businesses hand out rewards only to attract new customers. Your loyal fans notice and feel jilted. Cable companies like Shaw Cable are notorious for this: great up-front deals, but crappy service once they have you hooked. Think more like the coffee shops that use punch cards: the longer you stick around the better the rewards.
Employees
- Spell out the big picture. Repeatedly. The number one reason good people leave organizations is that they don’t feel like they are part of anything that matters. It’s all trees and no forest. Perhaps the most fundamental drive of all humans is the desire for meaning. Nothing drives us crazier (or away) faster than pointless exercises. Go out of your way to guarantee your employees know how their contribution makes a difference.
- Nurture culture. We’ve all heard it before: people leave managers, not companies. If you have toxic team members and managers on your staff, fix them or get them out. Reinforce positive behaviours with positive feedback. Measure what really matters. In the feedback you provide, and the things that you measure you send out the most important signals about is truly important to you.
Next: does being a keeper also apply to things like money and social media fans? You bet. Check here for more on that…
I work with business owners to redesign their business and its future. Want more out of your business? Contact me. From my home base on Vancouver Island, I provide planning and coaching support to businesses across Canada.
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