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Fostering Repeat Business
4:50Paul offers a list of best practices for increasing communication with existing clients.
So hopefully I've convinced you the value of repeat business.
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Now, the next question obviously is, "How do you win it?
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How do you keep clients coming back for more?"
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But the obvious thing is to focus on quality which seems so obvious.
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But when you're working with a client on an ongoing basis,
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it's easy to let quality slip over time.
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You begin to take that client for granted. You really can't do that.
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That's when you'll lose them so make sure you focus on quality all the time.
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Another thing I find really useful for keeping clients coming back
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is to do a post project debrief.
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So when a project ends,
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make sure you sit down with the client and talk about the project,
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talk about what went well and what didn't go so well.
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But also, talk about the future and what's coming next.
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Get the client all the time looking forward.
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And often, this will happen naturally anyway.
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We'll talk about scope tree in a future video
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but one way of dealing with scope tree is to write down those ideas
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and say let's do in the next phase.
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Well, here is a great example of that.
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This is where you cash in on that
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because you can then come back in your post project debrief and say--
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"Look, these are the ideas we had. Let's do them now!"
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Do regular reviews as well with customers.
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Sit down with them, you know, once a year. Or once every 6 months.
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Or once every 3 months. Whenever it is right and review where there site is at.
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And make sure that you have suggestions about where it should go in the future.
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Essentially what you're doing is trying to maintain a conversation.
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You're keeping talking to them.
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Keep them informed about latest innovations.
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Now you might want to do that with a newsletter
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that goes out to all of your clients.
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But if you do that, make sure you also talk to some clients personally as well.
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Newsletters are great but they are a bit impersonal
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and it's really important to make suggestions for people-specific sites.
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Finally, show them what you've done with other clients.
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If you've done something cool within a particular sector
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say if you're focusing on charities for example.
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You do one great thing for one charity site.
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Show another charity client that
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and suggest that they might want to do the same.
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One of the most important things when it comes to repeat business
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is to be going above and beyond in what you're delivering.
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If the client feels that you are giving them real value for service,
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then they will keep back coming to you.
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So you have to go above and beyond.
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So one of the things that we do is we are conservative in our estimates.
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So what we will do is estimate
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that a project is going to take longer than may be we think it really will.
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And then we come in on to that and that impresses clients.
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That gives them the feeling we're going above and beyond.
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Being proactive too is another great way of going above and beyond.
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So saying to clients, "Hey, why don't we do this? This should be a great feature.
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This should be a great idea."
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Now, most of your clients doesn't always have the budget
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to pay for these additional ideas.
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But you know what? Occasionally, I do that extra work for free.
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Not all the time because we don't want the client
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to get used to you doing work for them for free.
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But every now and again it's worth it. It's worth it to make the website better.
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But it's also worth it in order to show the client
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that you're going that extra mile for them.
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But if you are going to do extra work for them for free
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make sure you tell them you're doing that
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because the client needs to know that you're going that extra mile.
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Now, the problem with repeat business is that you can find you become very reliant
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on a single client and this can be dangerous to your business.
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You got to be careful that if you're just working with one client all the time
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and they make up such a big part of your business
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then if they go away you're stuffed.
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So be very careful when working with just one or two really big clients.
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And to be honest, you're going to need to sit down with them and discuss it openly.
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Talk about the fact that it's a problem for your business
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but it is also potentially a problem for them that they're so reliant on one supplier.
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You might want to consider actually in such situations outsourcing some of that work
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that you manage and you still have the relationship but using other people
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so that you can develop other clients alongside that main client.
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But that said, repeat business is the way to go.
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It will make such a difference and you really need to be working on it right now
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to ensure that your clients keep coming back for more.
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