McKINLEY OSWALD, President of Direct Sales, Verb Technology Company
The customer journey is all about understanding your customers, their behaviors, and their needs to encourage their loyalty. It’s an important undertaking that’s well worth your time, because marketing to repeat customers as opposed to prospective customers increases the chance of making a sale by 57%. Below, we’ve listed three areas to focus on to make sure you’re crafting a customer experience that keeps your customers coming back for more.
#1: Implement Automation
A well-timed follow-up strategy has been shown to encourage better communication between distributors and their customers, resulting in larger and more frequent orders. Distributors should also be engaging with all customer types, whether active, infrequent, or inactive. But keeping track of all customers and reaching out at the most opportune time can be difficult and time-consuming. The remedy for this is implementing basic automation systems that provide reporting of customer buying patterns and notifications, so distributors can follow up at the correct time.
#2: Focus on Reactivation
A regular customer stops making orders. Now what? There are several reasons a customer would discontinue their purchases, but ensuring distributors remain aware of customer buying behaviors is the first step in their reactivation efforts. If they’re keeping an eye on customer reports, distributors can promptly reach out to customers to remind them they are valued customers and encourage them to take advantage of personalized offers and promotions.
#3: Encourage Education
A comprehensive education for both distributors and customers is a crucial part of the customer journey. Distributors need to know their products well enough to sell them, and customers need to know them well enough to know why they are necessary. Providing your distributors with additional training on how they can improve their outreach is always worth your efforts, as it allows them to better serve their customers.
For the same reason, it can be useful to give customers access to educational tools to help them understand a product’s use cases. Being more aware of the versatility of a product might prompt them to make another purchase, or to use the products they own more frequently.
Remember: Retention is the golden ticket to boosting revenue when it comes to direct sales. According to the Harvard Business Review, increasing customer retention by 5% can increase profits up to 95%. The success rate of selling to a customer you already have is 60- 70%, while the success rate of selling to a new customer is 5-20%. By creating a streamlined and enjoyable customer journey, you’re taking a huge step in providing the kind of value that will keep your customers returning month after month.