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Your competitors are doing everything possible to try and lure your best customers AWAY FROM YOU and your company!
They have their business development mavericks going into your best customers’ establishments every week offering them anything to get them to switch. Some of the largest distributors are offering upfront money to your top customers if they would switch the business over to them.
Most DSRs and distributors take their best customers for granted believing that those customers love them. Many DSRs seem to think that their relationship is so strong that those customers would NEVER think about changing to another distributor!
What are YOU doing to KEEP them?!
Just taking care of their customer service issues week-in, week-out may not be good enough!! The PROBLEM with this thinking is that most distributors/DSRs are not proactively doing much of anything to make sure they keep and build the business they currently have.
You don’t want to learn the hard way that… SITUATIONS, CUSTOMERS and COMPETITORS CHANGE.
Your Best Customers are the #1 target in your competitors’ sales funnels!
Action items that you should focus on today with your BEST CUSTOMERS:
- Make the necessary investment of: TIME – SERVICE – GRATITUDE with your customers. Do what you would do to secure new customers—take the time to show and help them MAKE MONEY. Schedule prompts to remind yourself to make them feel special over time and not take them for granted because they’re nice to you.
- This means being available to your BEST customers WHEN THEY NEED YOU—and in this business, that’s 7 days a week because you know your competitors would take their call any day and time.
- Show your appreciation to your Best Customers by having your Sales Manager, VP, Owners, etc. meet you at that account so they too can thank them for doing business with you and your company proving they are “special” customers.
- You can also set up quarterly “best customers’ meetings” with those customers and take different management each time (Transportation, Credit, Inside Sales, or Warehouse Manager, CFO, CEO, etc.) with you on those calls so the CUSTOMER KNOWS how important they are. Any issues with a department could be discussed at that time with the appropriate manager.
How do you and your company respond to customer emergency situations? How you and your company handle these situations will show your customer that you’re in it to win it with them, and it will also help you with what action items and systems you might need to improve upon.
Independent operators are in the service business. DSRs and distributors who understand the “service business” will be able to keep their customers from landing on their competitors’ customer list.
Remember, the DSR and Distributor who add the most value and make it the easiest to do business with, will earn the business.
DSRs, Be a Resource…and Sell Something!
