Client Acquisition vs. Retention

While you must grow to survive, optimize your existing relationships to thrive.

What does it cost you to acquire a new client? Most companies don’t track this metric. Yet, we’re not talking about most companies, we are talking about your efforts. When was the last time you hit the streets and tried to gain traction with new prospects or in a new market? It’s difficult.

Sales is a process of jumping through multiple hoops to attain a small window for making an impression that could possibly, just maybe, lead to a sales opportunity.

​What are some of the obstacles to new client acquisition? ​

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Six keys to new client acquisition for small businesses:

• ​Research. The worst thing you can do is waste someone’s time. In order to reduce those chances you have to risk wasting your own time researching your contenders.
• Access. Good research helps you to hone in your targets and determine who the decision makers are. Most decision makers have built in fortifications to keep spamming sales people away. 
• Approach. Sales people know that the same approach does not work with every client, you must use your research and intuition to be creative in order to break down barriers.
• Saturation. You are competing with everyone else in your space as well as all the other businesses who see your prospect as a target. 
• Time. Every candidate that gives you a moment of their precious time is taking away from something they could be doing to complete their work or personal time. 
• Value. If you find a way to surmount saturation, time constraints and a bevy of other obstacles, you still have to overcome the hurdle of creating a value proposition. 

Unlocking the profitability of client retention as an entrepreneur.

Customer acquisition requires heavy investments of time and resources in repeated doses. If you aren’t tracking your efforts at an individual level then you are cutting yourself short of valuable data that will help you to improve your process. If you aren’t discussing wins and losses as a team then you are missing opportunities to help each other shorten the learning curve. You need to be intentional about tracking your efforts to acquire new clients so that you can adapt and achieve your goals.

While you must acquire new clients to grow your business, don’t forget to double down on your customer engagement and retention endeavors. According to Studio 15 CEO Jia Wertz, who sites, in her Forbes article, a study by Bain & Company, “Increasing customer retention rates by 5% increases profits by 25% to 95%.” Developing simple, yet intentional, client engagement and retention measures can pay significant returns for your team. Simple and yet overlooked. Jia has some great recommendations, which include:

Four keys to a better return on your client engagement efforts:

• Identify your VIP customers - I would call them your “ideal clients”. Who are the clients who get you and will help others to find value with your products and/or services. Do you know your “ideal client”? Do you optimize those relationships and do you also use that information to refer clients who aren’t ideal to organizations that would be a better fit? 
• Determine what keeps your customers coming back - this is a great point, what do your clients like about your products and/or services as opposed to what you think they appreciate. Do you ask? 
• Go above and beyond for the client - this sounds like it should be common sense but how often do you get too comfortable with a key client and someone else is able to leverage that lack of attention to steal them? If you don’t stay engaged, someone will come along and entice them. 
• Nothing replaces the human touch - Jia says, “I personally connect with many of our members to get to know them better and get their insights on our service.” Customer engagement and retention is the responsibility of everyone in the organization. It’s important to lead by example. ​

Tips for better returns on your marketing investments.

Client acquisition is at least five times more expensive than optimizing existing customer relationships. When you operate from a collaborative position, you can find ways to build stronger relationships with your team, clients and partners. Jia shares some insight from another business leader, President of Suite 203 Communications, Lauren Cracower who shares how to win-win-win in caring for a client.  “To nurture your existing clients, it’s important to be a connector for them. We always strive to strategically align our clients to suppliers, contacts or other great businesses that can help them achieve their goals.” 

Connect. Collaborate. Conquer.