Repeat sales are always easier than first sales.  Therefore, owners of small businesses are constantly on the lookout for ways to create loyal customers.  Regardless of what you sell, there are a lot of ways you can maintain a loyal customer base.  Here are some tips:

Stay an Expert In Your Field 

Continuously strive to stay up to date in your field.  It is key to your success that your customers perceive you as very knowledgeable in your industry.  With the Internet making it easy to do research, customers are becoming more and more informed.  You don’t want a situation where your customer knows more than you, the perceived expert.  So read the updates and take the courses you need to always be up to date on what’s going on in your industry.  Your commitment to lifelong growth will be rewarded by loyal customers. 

Make It A Priority To Resolve Customer Issues 

It is rare that you will hear about a customer problem up front, so you need to use your intuition in many cases.  It would be well worth it to ask your customers directly on occasion how the relationship is going, and what you might be able to do to improve the experience for your customer. 

The most important advice is to never point blame when you hear of a problem and use the SODDI defense (some other dude did it).  It’s your business, so everything that goes wrong is your fault – take the blame with grace.  Then rapidly solve the problem.  Customers are used to the SODDI defense and rarely encounter vendors who work fast to solve their problems.  Rather than remember the mistake, they will remember the pleasant resolution and give you their future business.  In fact, you may find that some of your biggest “problem” customers will end up being your best referral source. 

Help Your Customer Remember the Reasons They Originally Chose You 

Don’t be timid: it is critical that your customer is reminded of the advantages of choosing you over your competition, and you should praise them for their wise choice in you.  Everyone deserves a little praise, so why not also take the opportunity to remind your customer of your competitive advantages while praising them for making a good choice in you. 

Creating loyal customers is no more than treating them so well that no one else could compare.  When great service comes naturally, customers begin to expect it year after year.  That is when you have a loyal customer. 

Get more small business success strategies and claim your free white paper: “7 Ways Your Stone-Age Accounting System is Stealing Money From You Every Day … And, How to Get it Back This Year”  to learn about an online accounting program that makes it easy to track repeat customer profitability.