90 Days That Will Define Your Business Forever!

“Know what your customers want most and what your company does best. Focus on where those two meet.” Kevin Stirtz, Author

There is nothing like the feeling of accomplishment when it comes to winning a new customer for your business. Your success and hard work warrant a celebration, but this is just the beginning. You want that customer to be around for as long as possible to help grow your overall revenue. What you do in the next 90 days that will determine if they stick around or not.

The first 90 days of any new relationship are critical.

• A president has about three months to inspire the electorate and gain the political capital they need to govern.
• A young team prospect has but a few months to impress the coach before being sent down to the minors.
• A new CEO has 90 days to learn the job before the rank and file start looking for tangible leadership.

The First 90 Days

Just as the first 90 seconds are important in making a positive first impression on a new prospect, the first 90 days of the new customer relationship is crucial. For example, research in subscription businesses show that getting a customer to start using your product effectively in the first 90 days can lead to an increase in lifetime value of as much as 300 percent.

Take a look at marketing software provider Constant Contact, which used to struggle with the first 90 days of a new customer relationship. In the old days, Constant Contact took a “who, what, when” approach when acquiring new customers. Who stood for who a customer wanted to send an email campaign to; what stood for what the customer wanted to send; and when described the timing of the campaign. After users signed up for its service, Constant Contact would ask customers to upload their email database (the who). This required the new user to upload a customer list, which is the trickiest part of the customer’s initial experience. Customers had to leave Constant Contact’s site and struggle with how to export a contact list. The process was awkward and many new customers stopped using Constant Contact because they hit a barrier before they had a chance to fall in love with the real value of Constant Contact software.

What, Who, When

Wanting to stem new customer churn, Constant Contact changed the process to focus first on the what. Immediately after signing up, new users were encouraged to create their first email campaign. Suddenly customers saw their campaign come to life in front of their eyes.

Customers could see firsthand how professional their company could look. Only after the customer had completed the what stage and earned the emotional reward of seeing the first campaign come to life, did Constant Contact switch to the who part of creating a campaign. At this point, Constant Contact had enough relationship equity with the customer to get it over the hump of uploading its database.

This minor reordering in the initial stages of the relationship led to a dramatic reduction in customer churn – the death knell for any subscription business.

Business owners and managers often have tunnel vision. Their main focus is on the immediate transaction rather than the full scope of the customer relationship process. Building a successful customer relationship begins with understanding your customer’s needs (the what) and continuously focusing on how to meet them most effectively.

Whether you’re in a subscription business or not, how you treat a customer in the first 90 days sets the stage for their overall satisfaction and your overall success.

Getting a complimentary Value Builder report from The Osborne Group is an effective way of finding out how well you’re doing in acquiring and retaining customers. It starts with a 15-minute on-line questionnaire developed by internationally recognized small business expert John Warrillow. Your answers will generate a personalized report based on findings from over 17,000 companies and covering eight key business value factors.

To find out how your company is performing, click here to take the Value Builder questionnaire: http://www.thevaluebuildersystem.com/osborne-grouphttp://localhost/osborne/category/osborne-insights-blog/

To learn more about Value Builder factors and their impact on your company’s worth, see other blogs in this series:

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