Transactional or Relationship?

Get a customer to make a sale or…make a sale to get a customer? The way you answer this question depends on how you run your company and promote it. First part “get a customer to make sale,” is transactional marketing. That is, all you really care about is making the sale. These businesses tend to always be looking for the next customer. A lot of retail businesses are like this (think Walmart) and some service businesses to their detriment Low customer lifetime value. Lots of sales, low prices, get them in and out.

The second part, “make a sale to get a customer,” is what is known as relationship marketing. In relationship marketing the sale is the way to introduce your business to a customer. Then you can develop a relationship with them and they will continue to do more and more business with you (think dentists or almost any other professional service). This produces a higher lifetime value of your customers. These businesses tend to spend time with each customer, they care about their customers. They also keep in communication with their customers and prospects with a monthly printed newsletter and emails. This keeps the business up front in the customer’s and prospect’s mind.

So how you answer the question depends on whether you value your customers enough to build a relationship with them. If you want high value customers, you’re going to have to “put yourself out there.” Talk to me to find out the best way to do this.

Until next week,