Direct Sales Tips & Techniques For Customer Loyalty

Keep Sales UP After Holidays – Customer Loyalty

During the pre-holiday season customers are buying gifts for everyone on their lists, sales are good and you’re making money. But what happens when the holiday buying is over… and sales come to an almost screeching halt?  How do you re-engage home business customers & keep them buying after the holidays?

Customer Loyalty Marketing

Everyone these days is handing out a customer loyalty card. There are paper punch cards, plastic store rewards cards, direct mail and emailed marketing promotions with special offers, coupons, and more. You know what I’m talking about and I would guess your wallet is undoubtedly stuffed with marketing bait that companies use to lure you back time after time by creating a loyal customer. After all, it’s easier and more profitable to generate business from repeat customers than to look for new ones.

Techniques For Creating Customer Loyalty

There are many techniques that will generate repeat business.  You should incorporate some strategies that will generate repeat business year-round.

• Create incentives to keep them buying
• Offer Product Purchase Discounts
• Create Coupons & Product Club Cards
• Offer discounted Product Bundles for special value buys
• Offer a future Savings Coupon to redeem on their next order
• Offer Free Shipping on orders
• Customer Drawing Promotions
• Create your own Promotional Sales & Special Offers

Create a Customer Relationship Management Program

• Polish your Customer Service Skills
• Make customer service a priority
• Send personalized Thank You cards
• Do Customer Care Phone Calls
• Make Personal Customer Visits
• Send personalized Postcard Sale Reminders
• Schedule Customer Order Follow-up Calls
• Practice Relationship marketing
• Make Customer Referral Calls
• Create Marketing Tools for Customer Referrals
• Create a Customer Rewards Program
• Have your Marketing Plan in place for the new year

Customer Appreciation Tips

A face-to-face thank you can go a long way in building and maintaining good customer relations with your customers.   If you have an important customer, stop by his/her office with cookies or candy or host a small lunch with a few of your best customers. Customer appreciation will keep them coming back to you.

Direct Marketing Tips

Up-selling: Maintaining your current customers costs less and yields significantly higher revenue than marketing to new prospects. To build sales, use direct marketing, including e-mail and direct mail, to offer special promotions to your customer base throughout the year.

Ask for referrals: Do you rely on referral services to send business your way? It’s not enough to simply call on your referral prospects. You must also create a group of marketing tools for your referral sources to use with your prospective customers. Suppose your business is a health care company. By supplying brochures and other materials to hospital workers to give to patients requiring at-home care following a hospital stay, you’d ensure that your complete information got through to your most qualified prospects

Rewards: Build excitement by letting customers know exactly what rewards they can expect and how they can earn them.  For example, suppose you were shopping online, and one site promised future savings if you signed up for a rewards program, but it didn’t convey exactly what you might earn, while a second site offered a gift with purchase at enrollment and a bonus with every third buy. Wouldn’t you find the site with the clear rewards more enticing?

Offer graduated customer rewards: To stimulate maximum participation in your program, make your rewards readily obtainable–and graduate them so that you transform a higher percentage of your database from low-value to high-value customers. Graduated rewards can also energize sales of your higher-priced items, including those that customers might otherwise consider out of reach.

Provide in-kind rewards: What would compel customers who earned rewards to come back and buy from you (rather than another company): two free movie tickets, or 20 percent off on their next purchase? The bonus on their next purchase would bring them back to make a subsequent purchase. It would also make the program itself more memorable because the reward would be associated directly with your product. Best of all, the 20 percent discount would represent real value from the customer’s perspective, while your cost would be minimal.

Direct Sales Home Business Loyalty

Create an ongoing communications plan will create home business customers who are loyal to your sales business.  Frequent customer communication is key to forming and maintaining good relationships with your customers.  Follow the example of major online and off-line retailers by communicating often and sending follow-up mailings or emails after each purchase. There are many direct sellers out there so it is important to stay in communication!

Higher January Sales

The key to keep your sales from nose-diving after the holidays is to take action now.  Start implementing strategies now and you will increase customer loyalty and trust and will encourage your customers to respond to your offers and promotions as they represent real value and savings.  Create your strategic plan for generating repeat business now and throughout the year.

Merilyn Strange is a small business development coach and public speaker, an Independent Avon Sales Leadership Representative and Certified Beauty Advisor with a team of over 100 representatives.  She has mentored, coached and trained sales and leadership representatives in building successful businesses as well as product knowledge, beauty makeovers and skincare consultations for over 18 years.

Merilyn Strange is a small business development coach and public speaker, an Independent Avon Sales Leadership Representative and Certified Beauty Advisor with a team of over 100 representatives. Visit Merilyn’s expert page.