Ways to Protect Your Customers From Competitors

If your competitors are trying to grow new business, it's almost inevitable that some of them will start sniffing around your customers, trying to lure them away. Unless you take a few precautions, you could find yourself losing your customer base before you even know what's happened.

01. Stay in Touch: How often do you pick up the phone and call your existing customers? Almost certainly not as often as you should. Yes, it takes time away from other sales activities, but think of the five minutes you spend talking to your best customer as “customer insurance.”

As a rule, the more important your customer is, the more frequent your check-ins should be, but don't neglect any of your customers. You're also not just limited to using the phone; email and even snail mail can be great ways to maintain contact.

02. Add value: When you call up those customers, don't just say "hi." Always try to find a way to offer something of value. It could be a fact you've uncovered that's relevant to your customer's business. It could be a news article that's appeared recently that somehow relates to your customer or a suggestion you've come up with on how to maximize the return they'd get using the product they've already bought from you.

If a customer starts thinking of you as a valuable resource over and above what your product does, they're far less likely to drop you for a competitor.

03. Build Intelligence: Ask your customers to let you know after they've been approached by a competitor. If you have a good relationship with the customer, you can just request it as a favor.

For new or very major customers, consider offering some kind of bonus, like a discount on their next purchase or a freemium of some kind.

Once your customers are in the habit of telling you about any poaching attempts, not only will you have a much better chance to salvage the relationship, but you'll have an excellent opportunity to spy on your competitors' strategies.

4. Become a Resource: The more you know about your product and the related industry or industries, the more valuable you can be for your customers. Encourage them to ask you questions, and if you don't know the answer, find out.

This will make your relationship with them much stickier because even if they're tempted to ditch your product, they'll hesitate to lose you as a source of information.

Build up your knowledge base by reading industry-related books and magazines and by mining information from coworkers in customer service departments.

05. Counterattack: If a particular competitor has been approaching or stealing your customers, it's time to turn the tables. Go after that competitor's customers, and you're likely to distract him from poaching and turn them instead to guarding their own accounts.

Once you've built an intelligence network with your own customers, you'll be able to launch attacks on competitors at the first sign of poaching so you can stop them before they really get started.

06 Prepare for price wars: When a competitor gets serious about building new business, they'll often start by dropping prices to ridiculously low levels. Be ready to respond to such undercutting as quickly as you can.

Providing extra value will help you to lay the groundwork and at least get your customers to think twice before they jump ship.

When the inevitable happens and a customer calls to say that Company X is offering them a super price, you need to have a list of reasons on hand why your product is ​still a better deal.

(Article source form: https://www.thebalancecareers.com/protect-customers-from-competitors-2917349)

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