Getting and Keeping Customers

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Issue No. 3128 - $1.00 Home Archives Contact Us Privacy Policy

Thursday November 11, 2010

"There is only one boss. The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else." Sam Walton Getting and Keeping Customers By Perry Marshall Your existing customers are the number one asset you have. Here's a story about a company that never figured that out: my first Internet service provider. An Internet Business Tale of Woe The Internet service provider I had for my website did a very nice job of Web hosting for a long time. I never had to think about it, because the site always worked the way it was supposed to. But they started to have problems, and my entire website went down several times for two or three days. I talked to my account rep, who apologized for the inconvenience and said he would help. But the problems didn't go away, so I decided to go above him. I sent the president some very irate e-mails. The only response: a voice mail from the same account rep, who again offered to help. Meanwhile, I started getting direct-mail pieces from the company, inviting me to use their Web hosting services. Clearly, whoever sent those pieces did not know I was already an unhappy customer. That infuriated me. I finally called the company, closed my account, and dealt with the hassle of switching to a new ISP. Still, the direct-mail pieces kept coming. (And, by the way, they guaranteed "99.9% uptime" -- which, based on my experience, was a blatant lie.) Not only that but, though I'd closed my account, they continued to try to draft my credit card for $50 per month. It took more e-mails and phone calls to straighten that out! And I still get mail from them every few months. Every time I see something from them in my inbox, it makes me mad. And I swear I will never, ever do business with them again. Now here's a company with good (though somewhat dishonest) advertising that doesn't know how to keep a customer happy. They only know how to replace angry customers with ignorant ones. Very, very dumb. And very expensive. Clearly, it would cost them a lot less money to do a good job for their existing customers than to acquire new ones, set them up, give them Web addresses and passwords, and transfer their files. What You Get in Regular ETR... Plus a Whole Lot More There used to be only two ways to get wealth-building ideas directly from Michael Masterson: Pay his $1million consulting fee. Or be one of his family members, close friends, or business associates. As you can imagine, getting access to Michael's wealth secrets, strategies, and insights was next to impossible... until now. Because for a limited time only... You can get access for just $5 a month. And here's the best part: There's no catch. No hidden fees. No strings attached of any kind. Don't Let This Happen to You You can't afford to lose a customer, especially over incompetence and apathy. Common sense should tell you how to treat your customers -- but it's still worth saying here. Take good care of them. Maintain a personal relationship with them. If you do a bad job of this, the best marketing in the world won't keep you in business. And in your rush to get new customers, don't forget that most of your existing customers are unaware of your entire range of products and services. Old customers can be new customers too. So make sure you keep them up to date on your whole sales story. [Ed. Note: Perry Marshall was just one of a dozen+ experts at this year's Info-Marketing Bootcamp, the conference we hold every November. As we do every year, we invited the top Internet marketing experts and business builders to help us "pull back the curtain" on how to create a life-changing Internet business. And even if you couldn't make it this year, you can still watch every single presentation... at a fraction of the price attendees paid. Just go here to find out more.] And check out Perry's free e-mail course, "9 Great Lies of Sales and Marketing," where he takes on some of the most beloved "sacred cows" in sales and marketing.] Click Your Way to Profits... How many clicks of the mouse would it take to make $500... $1,000... $10,000+? Not as many as you think. We've developed a simple blueprint you can follow that could have you generating your first easy profits within a few short weeks. And all you have to do is watch... and follow along. ETR Reader Buck Rizvi did it. So did ETR Readers Julie Broad and Richard Mix. Find out how YOU can be next... "Nothing but powerful idea after powerful idea." "It was the most exciting conference I have been to... ever. It opened up so many incredible ideas for me. The content was the richest I have ever seen -- nothing but powerful idea after powerful idea, moment after moment. One of the most worthwhile things I have ever done." Paul Good The Language Perfectionist: Redundancies Repeated, Yet Again By Don Hauptman At a conference I attended recently, a speaker referred to "the little homunculus in the brain." The word homunculus is Latin for "little man," so the word little is redundant. I've written about redundancies several times in this column. But the error is so common that another report is probably not, er... redundant. Here are a few examples I found recently in newspapers and magazines: "These office workers did not want their children regressing back to the working class...." (The word regress contains re-, meaning back.) "[Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week is] set to expand throughout the entire Lincoln Center complex when it begins its stay there on Sept. 9." (Because throughout implies entire, the latter word should be deleted.) Preceding a list of new iPhone features: "Positive Improvements." (Is there any other kind?) "We were struggling with how to do this, since our work is mostly 95 percent observational...." (No comment necessary!) And finally, this response in an advice column for writers, ironically enough: "While you're not excited about the italic style... it is the most accepted way to treat a character's internal thoughts." (Are there external thoughts?) [Ed Note: For more than three decades, Don Hauptman was an award-winning independent direct-response copywriter and creative consultant. He is author of The Versatile Freelancer, an e-book that shows writers and other creative professionals how to diversify their careers into speaking, consulting, training, and critiquing.]

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