As a business, your profit margin depends on you offering a fantastic service and making those much-needed sales.
But have you thought about the importance of loyalty?
Getting a loyal following can make all the difference to your bottom line and it applies on every level, from the customers you’re trying to sell to all the way to the people you’ve got working on the shop floor, and that means you need a decent strategy in place to ensure you can achieve that kind of loyal fan base.
What makes loyalty so important anyway?
Let’s start by looking at loyalty from a customer point of view. Not only is it cheaper to retain existing customers than it is to go out and win new ones (as much as ten times cheaper, in fact), but loyal customers will ensure repeat business and will often buy, and spend, more than their fly-by-night counterparts.
This can have a major impact on your profit margin and can ensure you get the sales you need, because after all, if they know you offer a good service and are getting something out of the transaction they’ll be more likely to come back.
Then you just need to consider the fact that happy customers who have experienced great customer service will talk about their experiences which can lead to fantastic word of mouth potential, so in essence, they’ll be doing some of your marketing for you.
Not just for customers
But, it’s important to remember that getting a loyal following doesn’t just apply to customers—you need to get that kind of loyalty in your workforce too.
Happy, loyal employees who feel valued in their job will be more motivated and, therefore, more productive, and it also means there’ll be less staff turnover as well.
You’ll have long-term employees that you can count on, drastically cutting down the amount you’d have to spend on recruitment and re-training, and happy employees can also become the ultimate brand advocates.
You need to forge good working relationships on every level, and we think we’ve got the perfect way for you to achieve that.
How to boost loyalty in your business
Whilst there are a number of ways you can go about boosting loyalty, offering incentive schemes is easily one of the best. This applies to employees as well as customers—you can implement an employee recognition programme to make them feel valued, or perhaps offer an incentive for when they reach sales targets to boost motivation and productivity in one go.
As for customers it all comes down to having an effective loyalty program in place, giving them a tangible benefit for choosing you over the competition, and doing so can lead to great results.
So, never underestimate the importance of the relationship with your customers. Having loyal customers and employees can make all the difference, ultimately adding up to more sales and a valuable profit boost, so make sure to consider offering an incentive scheme of some kind and you could soon reap the rewards—much like your customers and employees could.