A FREQUENT CUSTOMER PROGRAM MATRIX!

It’s not really a new idea, from main steer USA general stores of the frontier days to the cyber world of today, business is being always mindful of their customers, trends, demographics, likes, needs and desires. The analytics of your customers reveal where your business is now and where it will be tomorrow. Recognizing that all customers are not equal and how you build a lasting, sustainable business with advocates and followers (fans, advocates, centers-of-influence, tribes, etc.) is critical to market share and market dominance.

The analytics and concept is easy, and everyone that has been a consumer for about two- seconds understands the reality of stratifying customers (constituents, membership, consumers) on a level based upon value, importance, ROI, etc., and in doing so you can generate deeper analytics on every aspect of your business from the feedback, engagement and interactions from these differing stratifications.

The Frequent Customer Loyalty Programs that we have come to know them as, allow for a better business client relationship, that is predicated upon multiple objectives – reward current clients with premiums to say THANK YOU, give that present customers reasons to partner with you and you with them, and to generate new business by pulling consumers away from competition. These programs can be built to have alliance cross synergies and provide real time analytics for what you are doing and what you may strategically need to do next to continue to be relevant in the marketplace or even condition and create the marketplace of tomorrow.

Today we can see variances of the loyalty marketing campaign across every aspect of the B2B and B2C market place.

The smart sales professional realizes that there will always be a second transaction from every customer in their life time and that every customer can also become an advocate if so motivated. Viewing every customer through the lens of the frequency customer transaction model can give you valuable ways to increase your market awareness, presence, and effectiveness. Whether you as a sales professional or your organization understands this, one of you better, as the consumer is far more educated today than yesterday and the competition is as well.

As an example, in the past ten years, I have purchased three homes in my marketplace. Every transaction was done by a different sales professional and different real estate Broker. Why? Simple, none of the Relator’s ever saw nor appreciated me as a customer and none had any system in place to make sure they stayed connected. Not one agent or broker even sent a THANK YOU note after the transaction. So, a simple question, why would I reward their obvious bush league behavior with another transaction?

So, whether you get an appointment, a sales presentation opportunity, a sale, or a “no”, what does your follow-up actions reveal about you? More sales are made after the “no” and after the two of you have long since parted company, than have been made on the first interaction.

Call the tiers of acknowledgement whatever you like, the formulas are always the same. You can build your Frequent Customer Program like a matrix with:

• Platinum’s - Most Valuable Customers/Contacts: Differing rewards, awards (tangible and intangible), acknowledgements, communications, opportunities, access, privileges, courtesies, invitations, upgrades, thank you, differing price- breaks, allowances, give-backs, premiums, etc.
• Gold’s – Next Most Valuable Customers/Contacts: A downgrade of options from your top tier acknowledgements, yet enticing enough to give them cause to align with you start to have a greater mindshare for you and less for others in the marketplace …
• Silver’s – Next, Next Most Valuable Customers/Contacts: A downgrade of options from your next to the top tier acknowledgements … You are rewarding these constituents for aligning with you in their early stage of marketplace transactions, and the greater the inducement to patronize with you, the greater your market growth can become in steering them away from the competition and to you …

Each of these premiums would be based upon differing levels of patronage and designed to induce greater patronage. Whether your organization actually has a formal initiative like this or not, the sooner you start recognizing that the marketplace is comprised of individuals that can affect your business at these volume levels, the greater you will start to strategically see and engage the marketplace differently.

You can start to benchmark your efforts off the top tier (Platinum’s) in everything that you do to attract more of that premium profile customers that really are best suited for what you have to offer. And when you find yourself exhausted in being able to do anything more for that demographic then you can concentrate on the next tier (Gold’s) to further grow and develop a thriving business sales pipeline/funnel in all that you do as a professional selling powerhouse.

Build your model today and launch it immediately. If not do not be stunned when your competition does and when your clients leave you for them!

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