A New Twist

“I am furious that I get treated differently as a regular customer than a new customer does,” complained my client. “I thought that my business meant more to that firm. I guess that I am just another number to them.”

Looking me in the eye, he spit out, “A new customer gets a lower price than me, and I have been doing business with that firm for several years! I can’t believe it!”

His outburst reminded me of my days selling radio and television. As salespeople, we were given incentives to find new customers. In fact, doing so was an important part of our compensation and evaluation. Our incentives to the new customers were a variety of price drops, including production freebies.

Occasionally, a regular customer would find out about these incentives and have a similar reaction to that of my client. “Why can’t I get that package? I’ve done a great deal of business with your station.”

I never could come up with a good explanation, probably because I didn’t think that one existed. “That’s how station management set it up,” I usually mumbled, not liking to blame management but feeling that the truth was my only option.

We were never given incentives to retain customers. Station management expected that once a customer had spent money on a schedule the customer would repeat spending at that level year after year. The customer’s spending became a baseline from which to build more business with the customer. There was never a consideration that the customer would not spend or would spend less. Management seemed to think that the customer’s past level of spending was “due” the station. Any reduction was met with management’s distain and censure for the salesperson.

Many times regular customers did not get the attention that a new customer received because the new customer took more time. Since a salesperson only had so many hours to get a job done, we salespeople often compressed taking care of regular customers because our knowledge of them hastened the task.

In other words, familiarity bred neglect.

Our familiarity with a regular customer took that customer and his or her business for granted. Intentionally or not, we were forced to juggle our time, and the result hurt our regular customers. Most regular customers were not consciously aware of this neglect. Even those who discovered the special packages to new customers never understood the extent of our neglect. They did not know what they missed. They did not know what we could have offered them, what we could have done for them, and what more business they could have done with our station.

Neither did management.

Two of the most profitable ways to grow your business are to increase the frequency and amount of business that regular customers transact with your company. Getting new customers is the least profitable way to grow your business. Unfortunately, as my client at the beginning of this piece explained, the least profitable way to grow your business is the preferred method of most businesses.

I recommend a new twist on familiarity. Make familiarity breed profitability. Rather than taking regular customers for granted, see them as the way to grow your business profitably.

Do it today.