This is the name of the game for 2009. While we have focused a good deal on growing your business in 2009, which there are great opportunities to do, it is just as important to hold on to every client you currently have.
More and more there are companies scaling back or shutting their doors due to the economic environment and with this you cannot afford to lose any client that you can avoid.
I suggest having your service team, virtual CIOs or CTOs create programs to focus in some key areas:
Provide proactive strategic value – Often a client does not know what they need and it is powerful when your team reaches out to them with a “Mr. Client, I know you are in X industry and what we are seeing as a technology trend in that market is X.” This level of conversation will set your team apart from being just the IT provider to the point where your clients believe you are looking out for their business.
Create a program to really understand your client’s business goals and how you can help them – In order to be able to have strategic conversations with your clients your team needs a program or a process to really understand your clients business and industry. We use a solution we call our Business Objectives Call and our team follows a process on how and when to deliver this interaction with our clients. The call generates a high level business discussion where we gain insight into the clients business and provide strategic technology advice on how to meet their business objectives for the quarter.
Establish first position in your customer’s minds - By doing the two items above along with some other planned out interactions we “establish first position in our clients minds.” What does this mean you may ask, it means that if the owner of the business is thinking about a strategic move for his organization one of the first things he or she will want to do is talk to their CTO at Everon. They consider us a part of their management team and value our opinion to the point where any strategic decision needs our input.
Demonstrate your value every chance you get – Lastly, and this applies to everyone in your company from the CEO on down to the administrators, you should be demonstrating your value to your customers. It is easy when you are good at the job of being the IT department for a client on a flat fee to be invisibly working away in the background. You fix issues and the business has no interruptions, the problem with this is in a tight economy someone will look at your line item on the books sooner or later and question what it is they are paying for. I suggest increased communication along with increased reporting and check in calls to ensure your clients know you are working on their behalf 24 hours a day 7 days a week.
If you focus your organization on executing these items in 2009 you will have much greater success holding on to current clients as everyone tightens their belt to weather the recession.
Let me know if there are other things you are doing to increase your value to clients.
Josh
