Ep. 30 Relationship Masters – Customer Retention Strategies

Relationship Masters – Customer Retention Strategies

How do some industries manage to get the same customers to buy from them year after year, while others have no customer loyalty whatsoever? What can you do to attract and KEEP clients longer? 

Torie Mathis and her cohost Sean discuss the magic behind the business marketing of some industry leaders and how it can apply to any business. 

We’ll cover:
Customer retention
Continuity Programs for any Business
Car Dealership Strategies
Insurance Sales Strategies
Lead Generation
Easy Marketing Strategies

Recommended Tools:
Kartra https://toriemathis.com/kartra
Constant Contact https://toriemathis.com/constantcontact
WP-Engine https://toriemathis.com/wpengine
Grammarly https://toriemathis.com/grammarly

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION –

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SAF 30

[00:00:00] Torie: Like to make it automatic. Like that is the key there. Like that is the key to make your marketing just work for you.

Hey, Hey, welcome to Smart AF I’m your host Torie Mathis. We have got a great show for you today, so let’s get started. So you were telling me that most people buy their cars from the exact same people. 

[00:00:27] Sean: We don’t. 

[00:00:29] Torie: We don’t, I don’t think we’ve ever bought a car from the same person again. 

[00:00:33] Sean: Well, we don’t even buy cars from the same dealership, every. Sometimes it’s not even the same state. 

[00:00:40] Torie: So is that why they do it? Because they buy always at like, I’m a Ford guy I’m going to keep buying Ford’s like that kind of thing. 

[00:00:45] Sean: Yeah, I think a lot of people, don’t move quite as often as, as us. And so yeah, the, you know, people will buy a car and they like the person that they deal with. And you know, when it’s time for them to buy another car, they go and they buy that same newer model car from the same salesperson at the same dealership every couple of years, if not even sooner than that, it’s, it’s extremely common. I just met a lady a couple of weeks ago that just did the exact same thing. And the thing is, is they’re like they know me there. And so they feel that. That’s where they go to get that deal, to get the other. 

[00:01:29] Torie: So you’re saying that car salesmen are relationship masters. 

[00:01:34] Sean: Yeah. 

[00:01:36] Torie: So they do something smart. So they know something pretty smart, which is that it’s cheaper and better to try to sell to people who already know, like, and trust you rather than trying to go out and like find all these other customers.

And they were just good. You’re going to do that. But at the same time, like you have all these people that you’ve already done business with. 

[00:01:58] Sean: For sure, possibly pay cash for the cars. But I think in most cases they’re getting loans for the car. So it’s a pretty good rule of thumb that if you can get them qualified to buy one car, you can do it again.

And it’s going to be a lot easier. Plus you, you know, when you, you know, that the car came from your dealership and this person has had it for two years now, you’re going to get the car back on trade-in and sell them a new car. Like it’s, it’s easy, no brainer business. And you keep that up and you get a good portfolio of a handful of clients that trade cars and every couple of years, like you, don’t even have to work too hard to go get any new clients.

[00:02:38] Torie: Well, I think this could be used in a lot of different businesses, really. So I know that like car dealership, people would use that. And I think insurance people, like I, could see them and financial advisors, like they’re always like, you know, really good at developing relationships with people. But I think that other businesses could do this too working on their current clientele to get them to come in more often, to get them to buy more often.

[00:03:05] Sean: And I think like like getting some, your clients on some sort of a maintenance plan or some sort of program that, that not only allows you to, you know, obviously collect revenue from them, but you’re also touching them. You’re, you’re making that contact with them so that you, they can remember who you are because, you know, there’s. Like the dog groomer you know, that doesn’t have your contact yet from me. There’s no way for that to occur for them. You know, they, that you’re gone to them. But so you have a business that you have an opportunity to either sell the same product multiple times or sell multiple versions of products or just completely different things altogether.

You want to keep getting yourself in front of those people to be able to do that. And I mean, there’s a ton of different ways you can do it. It just depends on your business. What’s going to work well for you, but like even HVAC, you know, you think you, if you go, most of your air filters are gonna need to be changed three every three months. What was the last time you changed yours? 

[00:04:17] Torie: Right? Yeah. If somebody said that they were just going to come and take care of it for me, because not only is that like, I’m going to forget, but then that gives me that peace of mind that like, I don’t have to worry about it. I know it’s going to be taken care of.

I think, yeah, I think no matter what the business is, though, you could think of some way to do this. You just got to like really dig in and like, how can we give them, give our clients that peace of mind? How can we make it easier for them? How can we split up payments so that they don’t have to, you know, come out at one time?

How could we make our model a little bit more recurring? Like I love the carwash too. Like people used to always just go and pay for a car wash, pay for a carwash but once these car washes were like, well, let’s give them an unlimited and make it the cost of a wash or two washes or whatever. Like most people aren’t going to use them, but then they’re like, I know I can if I want to. And I think that people like that, and then they get the touches, they, and they get they get to be able to use that all the time. 

[00:05:16] Sean: For sure. Yeah. And the thing is like most top of line drive through car washes. I mean, Drop in 20 bucks for that thing, you know, or a monthly plan is probably 30 bucks, you know? So you start, you wash your card two times a month and it’s paid for itself. That’s an easy sale. 

[00:05:37] Torie: Well, that’s probably a big part of it too, that you need to think like, how can we make this not only easy for them but how can we make it like irresistible? Cause really the carwash, if a car wash is $20 $22 but they’ll tell me all for $29 a month, 30 bucks. Right. I can wash my car as many times as I want. Like you said, why wouldn’t you like it, that’s a no brainer. 

[00:05:58] Sean: I think I washed her car probably 10 or 12 times one time in a month. 

[00:06:04] Torie: But then there were some times that we did it once and, you know, just because we got busy, we were gone. The weather didn’t cooperate. Like it probably ends up well, Being a wash for whatever the business is. 

[00:06:17] Sean: I mean, especially since we live in an area where it can rain often yeah, I drove by the washer 95% of the time just pulled into to take care of it. But the minute, the minute I wasn’t able to do it.

Like the carwash still collected that money from us. 

[00:06:34] Torie: Whether we could you imagine that if the carwash thought you know, that they didn’t do that, then they would have to hustle for every new client or hustle to get people to come back. Like to make it automatic. Like that is the key there. Like that is the key to make your marketing just work for you.

[00:06:50] Sean: I think it also gives people an opportunity to be loyal to you. 

[00:06:54] Torie: Well, I like that an opportunity to be loyal, not just to be loyal. Yeah. 

[00:07:00] Sean: So go back to insurance people. Probably constantly getting contacted by insurance people. Let me give you a quote, right? Because their whole thing is they’ve got to grow their portfolio. So if you’ve already got insurance and you’ve never hear from your insurance person, and you’re like, sure, give me a quote, you know, worst case scenario, it’s more in which case, nothing changes, best case scenario they quote it lower than what you currently pay. And it’s a win, you know? So. But if, if your current insurance person, if, if they called you on your birthday or, you know, just did little things and kept checking on you, even if they do some bullshit thing and say, Hey, I rerun all your stuff guess what your insurance goes down five bucks a month, you know, you’re like mark that’s. 

[00:07:52] Torie: Well, and that’s what you said with some of the car dealership people did, right? Like they were relationship master call you on your birthday. Like really that car guy, he called you on your birthday. 

[00:08:00] Sean: Yeah. 

[00:08:00] Torie: Which I mean, to me, like, I’m like, wow, I never knew he did that, but like we bought a car from this guy. When we lived in North Carolina and I guess he had been calling Shawn on his birthday, like, I didn’t realize that like that they did that. And I think that, like you said, you make that touch so that, you know, like, and trust them, like that’s super smart. 

[00:08:18] Sean: But from a psychological thing, you know, maybe I was thinking of getting a new car at some point. Every year it’s an excuse for this guy to contact. And I can be like, Hey, what do you got in there right now? Oh, I got all kinds of stuff. Why don’t you come on down and take a look? Boom. I mean, he’s got it. Yeah. Easy seller. He, I already know him. He knows me. Whether he gives me a good deal or not, I’m, he’ll make it feel like I’m getting a good deal.

And, and you multiply that and it makes it so much easier than just somebody off the streets. You know, they have no intention of buying a car from you or, or they, they obviously they cannot afford to buy a car from you. And you don’t know that until after you’ve spent six hours with them. So it’s, it pays to just keep the clients you have. Make them loyal to you.

[00:09:10] Torie: And you don’t always have to pick up the phone either, especially if you like, you’re a business that has a lot of clients that you’re not able to do that emails or, you know, any cards you can have companies sell it, send out cards and things like that. That’s another really great way that you said this is like, keep in touch with you. 

[00:09:26] Sean: You can automate all kinds of stuff. You, I mean their birthdays, if it was a big ticket item they bought from you, you know, Make up some happy anniversary. It’s been a year since you’ve gotten whatever or shoot, if it was HVAC and say, they, you, you know, you sold them a new air conditioning unit. I guarantee their stats out there somewhere that’s going to tell you how much your savings were for the newer more energy efficient thing. Just send them something saying, Hey, congratulations. On this year, you’ve saved X amount of dollars because you did this. The odds of them then saying to their neighbor, just a conversation, Hey, check this out.

You know, that’s a whole lot easier sell to get them get the next one, because that one customer is so happy that they’ve saved, you know, hundreds or thousands of dollars because they’ve upgraded because somebody else could be, well, it still works well. How is it working now? You know, if, if you can justify. Yeah, financially or whatever the case may be, then, you know, get out. I think that’s my point is the other aspect of things is your customers can get you more customers and they have to want to do that. And there’s a whole lot of easy ways to be able to do that. 

[00:10:48] Torie: I think anyway, like, you know, keeping the touches and making sure that you’re contacting them or signing them up for something. Like you talked about HVAC, you know, maybe a maintenance plan that will come out and take care of changing all your filters, you know, X amount of times a month. It just makes it so much easier for them, but it like, you really do. You have to have some forethought and some, a little bit of planning, but you could sit down.

Especially with some of your, your employees and be like, okay, so like what can we do? Cause we did that with the museum. People come into a museum and they come in one time, like, how do you get them to keep coming back? Because especially when people have to drive for something like that, it’s not like you have a, like, it’s not like a restaurant.

Everybody needs to eat. It’s a museum. So a lot of people might just think, well, we’re only going to get people one time. Or, you know, maybe a couple times, but like how do you really get them to keep coming back? And it took some thought and it’s taken some planning, but I think that we’ve done a really good job of figuring out how to make sure that’s in, of our messaging.

Right. And to always invite them back in because you know, there’s something new. So knowing that the museum does change, like you could have never said that to people and people would never know, but making sure that that’s always part of your marketing message tells people. The museum is always changing. We’re not static. We’re not one man’s collection. So it gave everybody a reason to always want to come back and people do, they come back and they’re like, you’re right things are different. You know, we’re having events or whatever it is to keep touching people, keep having them come back, keep having them, you know not just be that like one time and done customer.

Because that life cycle of your customer, if you tried, like you can make it more, you can have people buy more cars, you can have people come and get maintenance from you more times, but you have to ask for it and you have to plan for it. And you have to make sure that’s part of your business model. And I think no matter what business anybody is in.

Then making sure that you’re keeping in contact with them and doing those touches, whether it’s my birthday or making an anniversary or make something up that you can do or just planning on how you can make your business easier for them, like a maintenance plan. Like the carwash is a renewal, like the gym. Like, could you imagine if like gyms didn’t do that? You know, automatic pay. Like nobody would go, they do it on purpose so that, you know, you have to pay whether you go or not. And I don’t think that that’s like bad against them. I think it’s good for the gym goer because it’s like, you need to go to the gym, you’re paying for it anyway. You better get. And it’s good for the gym because, you know, they need to, you know, make sure that they’re having that income come in all the time. 

[00:13:31] Sean: And I think some businesses, some businesses is probably hard for you to visualize being able to do that. Like even dentists. I mean, if they didn’t tell you, Hey, it’s time to get your teeth cleaned. I mean, how often are you going to remember that? So that business, most dentists is that should be built in. If they’re not doing that, I got, I don’t even understand how they’re still in business because we’ve gone through a lot of different dentists, living all over the country and every single one of them tell us when to go in for the, for the cleanings, even if it’s just after the, you know, right after we get our teeth cleaned, they’re like, all right, we’ll see you in six months and you make the appointment.

Even if that’s all they did, at least, at least that’s done, but most of them they’re going to set email reminders and call and all that kind of stuff leading up to it. But you you’ve got the other ones where say it was the plumber or the HVAC installer or something like that where you don’t necessarily expect to be able to, to have those multiple touches.

But think of it like a like one that like would really like you, can’t not even, and visualize how this would be like a lawn service. Could you imagine a call up and you’re like, Hey, I need to, I need lawn service. 

[00:14:48] Torie: Just one time. 

[00:14:49] Sean: Their whole, their whole business is just to come out and mow your lawn once. And that’s it. Like, you don’t even think that you, you automatically go to, they’re going to come weekly and cut my lawn. 

[00:15:01] Torie: Why don’t people do that for haircut? Just get them on a plan. Like not like, oh, I’ll see you I’ll we’ll call and make an appointment for you, man. Just so we’ll schedule it right now. And like, some of them do that, but I don’t think they do it like as seriously, like as scheduled here. Right? Like there’s so many other businesses that they could do. 

[00:15:17] Sean: Mentality switch. Just like try whatever your business is. Try to think of how you could. You can, you know, continue to, to reach out and touch your existing customers because it also snowballs you’ve heard of the snowball effect. Like it starts with that one customer. Like there is no such thing as a snowball effect if you don’t start with the one customer, you don’t that automatically just stuff just, you start getting all this business, like you got to start with the one. 

[00:15:46] Torie: So my dad drills, water Wells, and my brothers work for my dad, but gets the family business. When I got out of the army and I came back, I worked for a few months, I don’t know, like six months or so with the business. Was really cool to kind of just see what they do, but so he would drill the water Wells, and then he would call up this other company and be like, okay, put the pump in. And then that other company would get the pump maintenance, which was a monthly or an annually or whatever, because like anything else, like it has to be maintained. We talked about like your website needs to be maintained. Pumps need to be maintained. So my dad would drill the well, and then the other company, like he would call and say, okay, go out there. And so that company would get the pump and the maintenance contract for it. So they were just giving this other company for years and years, all that recurring. 

[00:16:32] Sean: In the pump company makes more money than the driller. 

[00:16:38] Torie: Right. So they finally stopped and they’re like, yo, what are we doing? And somewhere in there, they finally did make the switch and they’re like, yeah, we need that. We need to do the pump maintenance and everything. But how many times are so many businesses? That little part of the business, letting somebody else do it, which is, you know, not great. Like there’s gotta be something that you can do in there to, to keep that not just be that one and done. Cause that’s a, we could do for website design. There’s a lot of companies that do this, their design and dash, I call them and they would design a website and then you never see them again.

Here’s your web, later, but we figured out how to make it so that we stay with our customers. Like they already like us. I already like them. I’ve spent all this time getting to know them and know their business and their goals. And like, I know what they like. And you know, you really kind of get this, this relationship with them that why would they go somewhere else?

If they needed a brochure designed or they needed, you know, social media or they needed, you know, we figured these ways out that we can keep working with them. We already know, like, and trust each other. They already have, you know, confided in me and these things that it’s easier than trying to retrain somebody else on what you like. Like I couldn’t imagine if we just like handed off our business to somebody else for those types of things.

[00:17:53] Sean: I was just trying to think of a business where it may not make sense. To have some sort of residual, I can’t think of them again. Think of one. 

[00:18:05] Torie: Yeah, pretty much everything you need. Like again and again. 

[00:18:08] Sean: Even if you get into like, like law enforcement, right. And you still want the officer going out into the community and being peace officer and, you know, being there in the community, you saw him once and then never saw him again. That’s not a good thing. Even, even fireman, you know, you want, you want, they need to come in and they’re checking fire extinguishers and, and making sure things remain safe. 

[00:18:34] Torie: It’s like medical procedures and things. People still need checkups and things that need to be like followed up on, like, everything needs to be, 

[00:18:40] Sean: I was thinking plastic surgeons and I’m like, so you go in and you get a boob job. You go through that, all that recovery, and you forget all the pain and discomfort you were in and they’re calling you ready for that nose job. 

[00:18:55] Torie: Right. 

[00:18:58] Sean: How many shows have you seen in there interviewing some plastic surgeon? And they’re like, oh, you can fix your nose here and we’ll fix your jaw line there and tuck here and tuck there. And like. 

[00:19:06] Torie: Or maybe they do like upkeep like Botox or something. I mean, that’s something that people have to come together. It’s a, it’s a sister type of service. So if you can figure out what your sister services like the. You know, whether it’s Botox or it’s the pump maintenance and, you know, installing the pumps for the water, wells. 

[00:19:22] Sean: Any pool company that is installing pools that is, does not have at least a side aspect of the business. That’s servicing those. Is blown it big time. Cause the pool you like, you’re going to install the pool once you’re not going to, you’re not going to install four pools for one customer. Maybe their friends, but not one customer, but if you installed the pool and then provided the service, that’s needed weekly.

[00:19:54] Torie: Yeah, no, that made me think of what does Karl Bryan say? And I’ve heard him say it like a million times. He says, who cares about selling the dog? Like the person, the dog sell them the dog food. Right? Because give them the dog for free. Just have them come and buy the dog food from them. The dog is just a one-time purchase, but the dog food is forever. The pool maintenance is forever. Like the chlorine is forever. Like that’s like every single business needs to figure out what their dog food is, what their chlorine is, what their, that. What is that, that you can, you know, keep those touches and keep in contact with clients. And, and I think, like you said, it makes it easier for the customers.

It makes it easier for the lady to buy the car again, because she already knows them. She knows they’re not going to rip them off. She feels comfortable with, and of course she’s going to go there. But if that car lot didn’t offer that opportunity or keep that, that poor lady has to go find somebody else and then worry about it.

Are they going to rip me off? Are they going to give me a good deal? Like it’s as much for the customer as it is for the business.