Lost Clients are not Lost Relationships! How to Win them back?

Did you ever lose a customer? You are not alone! Every business has lost customers. Some lost them to competitors or some due to simply disinterest.

For the good order sake, we define “Lost customers” as those customers that used to buy regularly from you (online or offline) but have not continue buying from you or maintained their subscription or upgraded to the new version of your product.

In fact, studies done in the last few years have shown that small businesses lose up to 40% of their customers each year. 40% of the current clients, that is insane!

According to a research done and compiled by INVESP you’re actually going to spend 7x the amount of money trying to gain new customers than trying to keep your existing ones.

Furthermore, Studies have shown that capturing the attention of a new customer costs up to 15 times more than maintaining the attention of a current customer.

So aren’t you better off focusing on keeping the ones you have instead of just focusing on gaining new customers?

You invested time, you investment money and resources to build the relationships with these people. Turn them from a leads to prospect and successfully to become your client. But now, unfortunately, you lost them.

As a business owner, losing a client is painful even if you don’t recognise it right away. 

I want you to understand: you lost them as a client but that does not mean that automatically you lost them as your relationships!

Remember: “Lost clients are not lost relationships!”

There are many reasons why you should keep building relationships with these lost clients. Among others:

1. In case the client made a mistake by leaving you, the door still open for them to come back;

2. A key person at the client that you built relationships with, may move to another company and bring this company to you as a client (based on the great relationships you build with him/her);

3. You can keep and maintain your reputation and prevent it to be damaged. When clients go elsewhere, they often share their bad experience with others, and if you keep your relationship with them, they may refrain from doing so.

4. You may have still a chance to get in the future your lost client’s referrals, testimonials, and network. By maintaining the relationship you prevent the entire lead source to be cut off.

And although it might be a slow process, if you keep nurturing your relationships also with lost customers, eventually your pipeline will backfill with all of those leads.

5. Lost clients can give you a lot of ideas how to improve your business and a candid feedback on your services, products, personnel etc. This information is significant and can effectively help you grow your business and build a better relationship with your existing clients.

6. And maybe one of the main reasons. You spent already so many resources, your time and money to build the relationships so it will be cheaper to continue building it with lost clients and try to win them back.

I trust you agree that reactivating customers who already know you and your service or product is one of the easiest, quickest ways to increase your revenues.

Re-contacting and reminding them of your existence, finding out why they’re no longer buying, overcoming their objections and demonstrating that you still value and respect them will usually result in a tremendous amount of new clients (or I shall better say returned clients) and drastically increased revenues in a veery short period … and will lead to some of your best and most loyal customers.

But I can hear you asking the next question – how do I reel back those lost customers? So let me share with you 7 key ways to gain back your clients and expand the growth of your business:

1. Prioritise Lost Customers

Do you remember now the names of all your lost clients in the last year? I bet you don’t. Have you ever really sat down and created a list of all the clients and customers you have not seen or heard from in a while?

It is time to prioritise these customers in your marketing efforts. Keep focusing on them and nurture your relationships with them, on a regular basis .

The next six steps will show the best ways to do that.

2. Find Out The Reason

Yes, sometimes we lose the project we got, but keep the client. But sometimes we lose the project because we already lost the client. Often, in fact, it is the loss of the client that is driving the loss of the project and not the other way around.

If you ask most business owners or professionals why they believe clients left their company you’ll hear “Fees!”, or “Timeliness”, or some technically related item.

The truth is that most people are taught how to fib by their parents, in order not to hurt another’s feelings. Think about it – we rarely tell others the real reasons why we end a relationship.

You need to follow up with each lost client and find out exactly what is the reason you lost them.

Is it bad service from your side? Was it the price of your product or services – too expensive (or maybe too cheap)? Were they attracted to join your “competitor” company that have better prices? Were they not able to find what they were looking for within your services?

You are asking how you can find out the reasons? Simply by asking them. Initiate an “exit” meeting with them and ask them. If you keep the relationships you can ask them again after several months (since some client feel uncomfortable to share everything in the moment of leaving you, but are willing to do it few months later).

You need to find and capture the real reasons. You need to learn from it.

Even if you don’t get them back, you have information you can use to prevent another customer from leaving, too.

3. Follow up & Offer Real Value

One of the most effective ways to connect with lost clients and to get them back to you is to keep them as part of your newsletter or email marketing you send on a regular basis to your clients (if you do not have one yet, you better get start NOW!).

You can even make a special email or a newsletter to your lost clients with an offer they can’t resist.

Invite them to seminars or events you are organising. They may not attend, but at least you make them aware of what your company or firm is doing and that you feel would benefit and interest them.

The contact always has to be real, authentic and sincere and offer real value to your clients.

The more value you offer, the more a client comes to depend on you. Don’t hesitate to share information that even lost clients may find useful, whether or not it benefits you in any way. Remember to keep it relevant and interesting.

One tip: since most customers get bombarded with tonnes of emails daily, you may decide to send to your lost customers an ‘old fashion’ letter on a paper or even better than that a special postcard written in your hand written addressed especially for your (lost) client. This is definitely a special attention giving tool to your client that they cannot ignore!

4. Take Responsibility

Don’t be defensive. Take responsibility toward your lost client and apologise, if appropriate.

It may not really be your fault, but please understand that genuinely fixing your customer’s problems and concerns is top priority in winning back that customer.

5. Being interested

Companies often keep in touch with their client – networking with them – to get something. They want a sale, a referral, a testimonial.

I suggest to you to be something, namely genuine, interested, a good listener, be the person who is interested in your relationships (even if they are lost clients) – chances are you will be in the minority.

It changes the vibration, the dynamic of interactions. People feel it. Lost client will feel it even more! They want to talk to about themselves and they like it when you are still interested in them and still willing to listen.

To be honest, there is nothing more interesting than being interested in others; it is like it has its own energy and real magic when you are dealing with lost clients.

6. Think and Treat Lost clients as Clients

A lost client is more than just a lost revenue stream; Each lost client still has his or her likes and dislikes, preferences for how to do business, issues and concerns.

The more you treat a lost client still as a person, rather than as a lost opportunity to make money, the stronger the bond between you will grow and the bigger the chance the lost client want to come back to become your client again.

7. Use the Power of Complaints

Did you know that 96 percent of dissatisfied customers don’t complain? In most of the cases, lost clients just walk away, and you’ll never know why.

The reason for that is that they are too frightened, or don’t believe it’ll make any difference. Often it is the case that they don’t know how to complain, or can’t be bothered.

Whilst they may not tell you what’s wrong, they will certainly tell plenty of others. Here is the interesting point. If you want these clients back listen to their complaints.

I always say, if somebody criticise you he dares to help you. So first say ‘thank you’ and then learn what can you do better.

Clients who complain are giving you a gift, they’re still talking to you.  Indirectly you got a new opportunity to delight them.

Think carefully about the manner in which you respond to their complaints. This will give you another chance to show them who you are and increase dramatically your customer loyalty.

Last Word

In all actions that you will take to repair the relationship with your lost clients, please follow these 3 important guidelines to re-engage them:

Be proactive: Make a list out of your date base of those lost clients that you really want to rebuild your relationships with. Be honest with yourself.

Be brave: Re-build relationships with a lost client without being afraid and concerned of the sequences of such an act. Communicate with honesty, openly and with genuine interest to learn more about them

Be direct: Address the problem you had with the lost client directly, once you find what it is. It is actually the opposite; addressing the problem will be perceived by your lost client as a real act of ‘GIVING ATTENTION’ to them.

I want you to understand that networking with your clients, even the one you lost is no more than developing customer relationships on a constant basis with your relationships. This will guarantee to re-gain and maintain loyal customers over time.

Remember, your customers are not asking for everything – they only want to feel that your business still cares about them, respects them and their buying decisions and that you’re willing to do whatever you need to do to get them back.

QUESTIONS

Have you lost a client through no fault of your own? What happened that caused you to lose that client?

How do you make it easy for your lost client to bring you back? What makes it difficult for your client to rehire you?

Please share your comments and input with me, I read every comment personally.