The Purposed Of A Business Is To Get And Keep Customers!
Get that right and you will have a big business. And your business will thrive. Get that wrong and you will soon be out of business.
I can hear it now... "But I thought the purpose of my business was to make money!?"
Nope. Making money is a side-effect of focusing on getting and keeping customers. It cannot be the focus of your business.
What IS a customer? Well - isn't that a person that buys something from you? And if you focus on finding people that will buy something from you and keeping them buying from you, then you have a sustainable business. And you make money.
On the other hand, if you focus on making money, you can lose customers. How? Let me tell you what happened to me recently at a local business...
About a month ago there was an advertisement in my mail for a new local car service place called "Roy's Rapid Oil" for a $12.95 oil change. I thought that was a great deal and since I needed to change the oil on my Jeep, I drove over there and told them I wanted an oil change. The OWNER of the business asked what kind of oil I wanted. I said "Penzoil". He said okay and had his employee changing the oil for me in a few minutes.
I leafed through a magazine while I waited and about 20 minutes later the owner said my car was ready. When I went to pay the bill, it was $24.95 for the oil change. I asked what happened to the $12.95 price? He said, that's only if you use Quaker State oil and pointed to a small sign over his right shoulder that spelled out the terms of the $12.95 offer. It said in about a 14-pt font that the $12.95 offer is only valid when using Quaker State oil.
Of course I said "Why didn't you tell me that when you asked what kind of oil I wanted in the Jeep?"
He said "I can't help it if you don't read the sign!"
I asked him how many of those mailings he sent out. He said he paid $500 to print and mail out 1,000 of them. I smiled and paid him the $24.95 and walked out. Could I have argued about this? Sure. Could I have called the attorney general's office about this? Sure. I could have done a lot of things, but it was worth the extra $12.00 to me to have this experience to write about.
Naturally, I will never go back to his shop for any kind of service. AND I have told this story to every neighbor I see because it's so stupid on his part. One of my neighbors said "Thanks for telling me, I was going to take my car there next weekend for thier special but now I will go to my dealer instead." I saw the neighbor again last night and he said he passed this story on to another neighbor who said exactly the same thing!
I went to my local car parts store for new wiper blades this morning. The subject of oil changes came up and I started to relay this story again. The guy behind the counter said "So YOU"RE the guy!" He had already heard my story from one of my neighbors! Word is getting around pretty fast. Amazing how far the story of cheapskate-Roy's $12 had traveled!
How long do you think this new oil change shop will stay in business? The customer you make the most money on is your repeat customer because you had zero acquisition costs to get him in the door. On the other hand, Roy paid $500 to acquire customers via his mailings to my neighborhood. A typical direct mail response rate is 2%, so his $500 should have bought him 20 new customers. His $12 extra income had just lost me and two other customers he would have picked up from his mailing. Unless the NAPA store manager relates this story to other potential customers.
Even more fun is that this story will be read by over 100,000 people this year. Some of them will live in the Elgin/Streamwood/Schaumburg area. Let's just say Roy's will reach a whole lot of people with his $12 extra income. :-)
How does YOUR business treat customers? Are they just the pathway to your money, or are they the focal point of everything you do? When your customers find a flaw in your strategy, do you sacrifice their future business so you can make an extra $12 today, or do you make them feel like you are the sort of place they want to come back to over and over again?
If you haven't read Customers For Life: How To Turn That One-Time Buyer Into a Lifetime Customer yet by Carl Sewel then you need to buy the book and read it. You'll never see customers the same way again after reading how Carl turned his business from the worst to the best by simply focusing on building customer loyalty. 
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