How to Keep Your Customers from Leaving

Salespeople and managers often mistakenly assume that customers leave for only one reason — price.

In fact, the customer may be more concerned with service, quality, long term care or even the way salespeople field questions than with price. The next time you lose a customer and hear yourself saying, or thinking: “The reason is simple. Our price was too high,” think again. Or, better yet, ask the customer why you’re no longer the vendor of choice. And don’t be satisfied with pat answers. Dig deeper into the customer’s situation and you’ll discover some very interesting ideas.

When asked to explain why they made the change, customers are quick to state that price drove them away. Quite often, they’ll emphatically add, “We wanted to maintain a working relationship with you, but we just couldn’t justify the cost of giving you our business any longer.”

This sounds factual, straightforward and rational. Who can argue with an account going sour because of a pricing problem? Yet, we often fail to choose the low bidder because of fears that low price equates with low performance or poor quality product.

Yet, if problems arise and we find that doing business with a company is more difficult than it was in the past, we begin to plan how we’re going to break the relationship and move to a new supplier. And what do we blame? Price.

The conversation often goes something like this: “We’ve been doing business with you for a long time. And we’d really like to continue, but we’ve been having a hard time justifying your prices. There are just too many others standing at our door willing to do just about anything they can to get our business. Frankly, they’ve made it impossible for us to stay with you. I’m really sorry.” All the talk about price is merely an excuse for ending a relationship that has already deteriorated.

We can blame “the boss” for the defeat, for the loss of business. When it comes right down to it, few customers want to take the time or get involved dealing with the root of the problem — customer neglect. And that’s what customers mean when they say, “It has become too difficult to justify the price of doing business with you.” They can’t afford to fix the problems at your shop when they’re busy tending their own fires!

Here are eight examples of customer neglect. From your experience, how many can you add to this list?

1) Customers feel we take them for granted. Often we don’t make them feel special nor do we provide any extra care or service to show how valuable they are to us.

2) Customers get the idea that the only time we show interest in them is when we want an order. We’re very predictable when it comes to “caring.”

3) Customers feel we spend too much time and lavish too much attention on prospects. How do they know this? Just recall for a moment how we treated them when we were trying to get that first order.

4) Customers think we do a poor job communicating with them. Invoices are just about all they ever get from us now.

5) Customers feel we are only interested in “big accounts.” What is it that we talk about whenever we see them? The “big, new account” we just landed, of course.

6) Customers sense that we drop them like a hot potato once we get them. They were pleased with the fine way we treated them at the beginning. But they noticed the difference once they became customers. Such an approach not only leaves a bad taste, but it makes it impossible to develop a positive relationship.

7) Customers believe we don’t follow through with promises we made when we were trying to get the business and then we fail to improve the service we started at the beginning of the relationship.

8) Customers see that we’re more involved with our own bureaucracy than with their needs.

There is a very clear message here: Customers don’t leave because someone else offers a lower price. From their viewpoint, they leave us because we have done a poor job of taking care of them. Customers will tolerate almost anything, including less than perfect service. What they are unable to accept is being neglected.

When someone says that your company lost a customer because a competitor had a lower price, you are hearing an excuse. It’s simply an old-fashioned cover-up. The real problem, more times than not, is that another neglected customer has gone in search of greener pastures.