Take this test to see where you are in the race to revenue

Think of tumbleweeds blown into the corner of a barbed wire fence. As a farm boy growing up in Colorado, it doesn’t take much imagination to conjure up the image.

This is how many organizations find their customers. “We’ll take any ol’ weed that blows into our fence”.  Or they hire a salesperson, (weed catcher on the loose) and put them in “the field”.

It’s time to challenge the status quo. I suggest a customer acquisition/customer retention strategy. As a matter of fact, I suggest a five-year customer acquisition/customer retention strategy.

• Begin with the well-developed strategy to a targeted acquisition of the most profitable customer for your specific business.  Sounds simple right, have you done it, are you doing it? What’s your high-profit customer profile, why, does everyone in your organization know this, and embrace it, does it represent your brand?

• Once you’ve earned them then you have a shot at creating the profit machine due to your ability to keep them.  To keep them buying, happy, referring, and advocating for your company and products. This strategy moves an organization from gathering tumbleweeds to customer lifetime value ratios. From chance and hope to science and strategic focus.

What’s the current state of your race to revenue or tumbleweed gathering efforts?

Take the test:

• Do you own or lease your customers, (are you oriented to volume or value)?
• Do you throw money at sales training without a highly focused, highly disciplined customer acquisition strategy?
• What’s your cost of customer acquisition, (what does it cost you to buy a customer)?
• What’s your annualized customer retention rate? Who left, why? What’s your customer lifetime value, CLV?
• Do you have, (at a minimum) a five-year customer acquisition strategy?
• Do you have a customer feedback loop to ensure a metric’s driven customer satisfaction/customer engagement index?
• Have you strategically profiled your customers to ensure you’re buying the right customers and will they, by a very high percentage stay with you, for how long, why how do you know?
• Is your entire organization radically focused on fulfilling on your customer promise, every time, everyday?
• What ‘s your employee retention rate and do you know the financial correlation to customer retention?
• What position does your brand hold in the market, is it true, how do you know?

How’d you do? Are you able to easily answer the questions, and associate a direct or tactical financial impact to each and how each compliments or detracts from your organizational strategy?

Granted, that’s a substantial test critical however to having a business that is easier to sell or run in any kind of market condition. Nothing speaks more profoundly than a highly profitable, well-run organizational machine that comes from brand positioning, a solid percentage of retained customers, and delivering on the customer promise, everyday every time.

Does your organization specifically brand itself through its customer acquisition/customer retention strategy, do you have the tools, people and processes in place to deliver on your customer promise every time, everyday? Do you have a consistent method to measure straight-line from measured performance to strategic initiatives?

I offer this simple solution, no more tumbleweed gathering time to get focused on your strategic customer acquisition/customer retention program today.