Retaining clients is far better for any business than constantly having to find new ones. But that doesn’t mean it’s always that easy. If you’re looking for tips on how to increase the lifetime value of clients and you want to ensure they keep coming back, then here are six key ways you can do this.
1. A Feedback Loop
Everyone likes to see progress, no matter how small that progress might be. It provides validation that you’re doing the right thing and you’re moving in the right direction. So as part of your service to your clients, you want to find a way that you can have an effective feedback loop where you are tracking the KPI data that’s important to them and their goals. You need to be able to report back to them the progress that they’re making.
Maybe it’s a monthly or quarterly report, depending on the frequency that you see your client. You need to state that this is what your vision and your goals were when we started, these are the KPIs we’ve been tracking, and this is what’s actually been happening. It could be that the net profits have gone up or sales have gone down etc. Regularly showing people relevant business information helps to keep them engaged and it makes them want to continue working with you.
2. A Proactive Action Plan
How strong are the action plans you have with your clients? It can sometimes be easy to fall into the trap of taking a bit of a haphazard approach to business coaching, where you don’t have a plan for the direction you want to take your clients in. Your clients will probably sense that and it may deter them, because it feels like you don’t know where it’s going.
They’ve come to you as a business coach because they need help and direction. You need to support them in taking their business to the next level. Therefore, it will fill them with confidence if you have a plan, process or method in how you work. Even better if it can be something that is independent of you, as it will give them even more confidence because it is a tried and tested approach that is used by lots of other coaches.
If you don’t have a proactive action plan process, check out the next steps below to find out how you could easily implement one.
3. Wants and Needs
When you have a blended approach to your coaching, giving people both what they want and what they need, you will provide a much better service. To give an example, you might have a client that says they want to increase profits and therefore they want to talk about sales. But actually what they really need to review is their operational efficiency.
If their ultimate goal is to increase profit, you might be able to find something in operations that, with a few tweaks, will have a massive impact on profit. Your clients won’t be aware of that, so you need to have that holistic point of view and not be led too much by your client. They don’t know what they don’t know, so you need to make sure you’re always exploring beyond their level of knowledge. You’ll end up delivering much better results and that will definitely increase your lifetime value. To find out more about this, take a look at our previous blog.
4. Don’t Be All Knowing
Admitting to not knowing it all might seem counterproductive, but it’s actually the best thing to do. Some business owners will stick with a business coach for a year or two, taking as much knowledge as they can from them, and then they’ll move on, believing that the business coach has nothing else to offer. This might seem brutal, but it happens.
It’s actually far more canny to own the fact that you’re not the all knowing coach – and none of us are anyway – and promote the fact that you have your skill set, but you also have other things to offer. And then work out what else you can offer.
It could be a monthly newsletter where you’re sharing tips from the personal development you’ve been doing recently. If you demonstrate that you are continually growing and learning, you have a lot of interesting and useful connections that you can regularly introduce your clients to, and you seem to be visibly offering something new all the time, then it’s a more compelling reason to stick with you as a client.
5. Absolute Clarity
Another way to increase lifetime value is to get absolutely crystal clear on your clients’ vision, goals and time frame. This is really, really important. We might all ask about vision, but a lot of people don’t ask about the time frame. This is actually vital, though, because it forces the client to put themselves under pressure without you having to do anything.
Once you’re clear on their vision, goals and timeline, you can then create an effective action plan. From here, it all seems real, they’ll have a list of tasks and they’ll have true visibility of what needs to be done, and you’ll be able to track it effectively against the goals, providing useful data. Again, if you think your client action plans could be improved, take a look at the next steps below.
6. Keep Looking Forward
Don’t wait until your clients have hit one goal before looking at the next. Instead, when they’re about 20% away from achieving the current goal you’ve been working towards, start to have the next conversation. Look at what the client wants to achieve next. If you wait for a goal to be achieved, your client might stall. They might be happy with the result and want to stop for a while.
If you keep looking forward, then all of a sudden the relationship is running like a well-oiled machine and there is less chance of your client walking away.
Next Steps – Action Plans
hubbix was built to help enable long term relationships. In every one to one session you have with your client, by using hubbix you’ll be asking questions to uncover vulnerabilities and you’ll be providing pointers to focus on. By the end of the meeting you’ll have an action plan produced and ready to go that your client can easily work through. Then, when they come back to the next session, they will give you feedback on those actions.
You will have more insight to help overcome any challenges, you’ll have a tangible record of what has been achieved and what still needs to be done, and it will be a step by step process leading the way to achieving the ultimate objective.
This structured approach that enables you to look more widely at a business could transform your client sessions. If you haven’t already got structured action plans in place, please do check hubbix out. Even if you’re just looking for a bit of inspiration.