We Need To Think About Retention Differently!

We all know customer retention is important. Creating great customer experiences, making sure we deliver on our commitments, keeping them happy are critical. We are all familiar with the “bow tie” chart, showing the importance of not only retaining, but growing and upselling. And most of the strategies seem built around customer retention. But are all of these enough?

The problem with most of our retention strategies is we become the status quo! Remember when you were first chasing the deal. The customer wanted to change. Or possibly, we incited them to think differently. But the status quo became unacceptable, and the customer changed. However they were doing things in the past were displaced and replaced with our solutions.

Now, rather than being the solution to that earlier change initiative, as they might be, we are now part of the problem. We are part of the problem keeping them from doing more, to doing things differently, to addressing new opportunities.

And guess what, there is some sales person stirring things up. Trying to get the customer to think differently, to imagine new possibilities. Or the world has changed. What had worked well in the past, no longer works as well in the current environment, or can be an impediment to responding to challenges in the future.

For ages, we’ve put “farmers” into these accounts. Their primary charter is keeping the customer happy, driving renewals, finding ways to expand, and cross sell. They are there to “protect” that base revenue.

But that’s a path to failure. Both for the customer and for us.

To retain our customers, to grow them, to maximize that share, we have to do the things that won us the business in the first place. We have to continue to help our customers think differently, to innovate, to find new ways of doing things or to address new opportunities.

To be fair, this is not just a selling issue. If our offerings aren’t constantly changing and improving. If we don’t develop new offerings, enabling customers to address new challenges or opportunities; we become irrelevant. If our customers aren’t fully exploiting what they originally bought,, we need to help them learn why they should do this, improving their utilization and the value realized from our solutions.

Retention is really never about maintaining the status quo. Rather it focuses on continuous improvement, innovation, adaptation and change. Do you have these strategies built into your retention and account plans? Know that some competitor, or your customer is thinking about these things and threatening your base.