When I go to Google and look up the term “the first 100 days“, the results bring back information on how a newly elected US president is doing during their first term in office. I’d like to re-frame this reference so that you’ll think about the first 100 days of a new relationship with a customer. The concept is that if you have at least 5 memorable touch points with a new customer (usually personal) within the first 100 days of establishing that relationship, you’ll have a 90% higher chance of turning that customer into a lifer. This is my idea, but to show you the power of word of mouth and its affects on your business, I heard this through a friend of a friend that saw a presentation on the subject.
The source was a guy named Joey Coleman, self styled Customer Experience Guru that gets 6 figure contracts to solve customer problems for Fortune 500 companies. I was so intrigued I not only had to look it up, but hunt Joey down to speak with him personally to find out exactly what he meant. I am sure glad I did because in one 30 minute long conversation, I was given enough blow-your-mind juicy customer service ideas that 45 days later, I still have items on my to do list.
Depending on your customer base, and how large it is there are a number of ways to implement a strategy like this. If you’re a small to medium sized business, and you can handle the capacity, a personal account manager for each important client is the preference. I had a business mentor of mine actually require a 10 minute “coaching call” with each client for 10 minutes per month. The real purpose of the call was to check in with the client, make sure everything was OK, and to ask about any business challenges or frustrations, especially with regards to their product. Guess what his renewal rate was? Yes, ridiculously high, I doubt if he lost more than 1 client per year.
That same business mentor literally transformed two of my businesses when he gave me the simplest of all advice. Speak with your customers, and then speak with them some more. I now make a point of speaking with at least 1 client per day, well I try, but I don’t always get it right but the effort is there and other days I make up for it.
I recently started another personal directive where I promised to myself and to a few other accountability partners to give to someone each day, for 365 consecutive days without any expectation of receiving anything in return. I’m blogging about my journey along the way, and I’m being as open as I possibly can about it. Anyone that wants it, my giving doors are open, so please reach out to me if you feel like you could use any type of coaching or if you just want to chat.
I hope that you’ll think about the first 100 days when you enter that new customer in your CRM. Don’t mark it as a closed sale, set up a chain of communications to make sure you keep that customer for life, because it’s those first 100 days that count the most.
Will you do it?
