Customer Relationship Management – Why you should focus on customer loyalty!

What is customer loyalty?

Customer loyalty is essential for the long-term success of a company. Customer loyalty aims at measures that turn your customers into fans – winning over the first-time buyer to become a permanent repeat customer and binding them to a company in the long term.

Acquiring new customers requires countless resources and, ultimately, intuition and time. In addition to the needs analysis, gaining trust, and countless price discussions, a lot of effort, time, and patience are usually required. However, the resources invested should not be spent “only” on closing a deal. Each enterprise should be set on a long-term customer connection.

Successful customer retention means gaining the trust of customers. A promising corporate strategy is customer-centricity. This strategy aims at the fact that all departments concentrate exclusively on the customers – the customer stands in the focus within the complete creation of the value chain. All information, wishes, needs, and requirements from the customer’s point of view must be centered and stored in a structured manner by the company. Cross-departmental cooperation and maximum transparency about customers and their wishes are facilitated and guaranteed with a CRM system adapted to your value creation. CRM systems are software solutions that make customer loyalty in the company possible in the first place.

Customer retention is cheaper than customer acquisition

Why you should focus on customer retention and why customer retention is more favorable than customer acquisition is briefly illustrated with a small example.

Imagine you are a building supplier and manufacture underfloor heating systems for apartment buildings.

The success lies not only in the production of the underfloor heating solutions but also in the direct installation directly on the construction site. Your sales team has several approaches to sales success. First, the acquisition of new customers is a key sales function so that long-term business relationships are generated in the future. Second, the communication function and ongoing customer care are other activities for your company’s success. Ultimately, your sales team’s goal is to generate sales. But why is customer retention now more beneficial than customer acquisition?

One answer: trust!

If a new customer approaches you with a major project, this means a long road to closing the sale. In addition to the customer relationship, which should not be underestimated, your sales team needs tact and sales talent. The path to signing a contract depends on the upstream stages.

Success with new customers lies in relationship building. This phase determines whether the potential buyer becomes a customer. A lot of effort, countless questions, several test drives, active listening, and sales talent characterize this phase before it goes on to the needs analysis, product presentation, and the purchase conclusion phase.

A lot of patience and time is required. Trust is not gained in a day, but once the potential customer has confided in your sales team, the likelihood of winning a new customer increases.

If, on the other hand, an existing customer approaches you again and wants to use your underfloor heating system for another project, mutual trust is already built. There is already a positive relationship. The harmonious togetherness shapes the sales talk positively. Many difficult phases in the sales process are eliminated because a positive relationship has already been established and your sales team has gathered all relevant information about the customer – what makes him tick, what the customer prefers, how he buys, what he has bought, and much more information. This transparency and customer knowledge allow your sales team to initiate a sale with little effort or expense. Ensure efficient selling with trust and relationship building.

Know your customer.

With such a long enterprise value chain, managing the entire sales process across the enterprise is the challenge – lead generation, proposal creation, invoicing, pending activities, tasks, and quotes.

Elemental to your business – staying in control and on top of things!

CRM system from Craftcloud

With Craftcloud’s CRM software solution, you manage your customers efficiently and digitally in the cloud. Craftcloud’s CRM software gives you customer visibility, so sales-relevant customer information can be accessed by any employee, anytime, anywhere.

Keep track of your multitude of relationships – well-organized property management is critical to your success! Keep track of different construction objects, complex relationship networks, and the multitude of contact persons.

Craftcloud – the digitization expert for the construction industry and crafts.