Sarika Periwal reached out to me about a guest blog. I thought it was a great idea to do a post on marketing, sales and service.

For any business to succeed keeping customers happy is essential. It is always more profitable to retain an existing customer who will come back for repeated purchases than to convert new potential customers for each sale that the company makes. Statistics exist to support the fact that the cost of acquiring a new customer can be six to seven times higher than retaining an existing customer. To this effect you need some strong policies which help the company to improve their customer retention rate.

The focus of these policies is to deliver a flawless customer experience when they deal with your company. It does not matter what you sell. It could be a physical product, a digital solution, a service that is offered in special circumstances, or anything else. There are three main areas where your customer or potential customer will interact with you. These are marketing, sales and service. They are also known as the three pillars of successful business. If you manage to get your act together for these three aspects you will have a thriving business model. Here’s how you can do this and benefit the customer and the company both.

Marketing

All the marketing campaigns that you run are to get your customer’s attention. These all hope to make the right kind of offer to the customers at the right time to tempt them into making a purchase. Here the focus is to build on the trust that the company brand name inspires. To make the customer believe that they have the right solution to their needs and to provide the customer with the ultimate financial deal when they buy what the company is offering.

Sales

There is nothing as sad as losing a customer who would have bought from you but couldn’t find how to complete the sale. This pillar deals with providing the potential customer with the ease of buying the product in a quick and hassle free experience. You need to be able to provide the customer with many ways of buying the product. It could be in the shop, online or through partner vendors. There should be many payment options as well. A lump sum payment is easy for a small purchase, but arranging finance options for a larger purchase is a good idea. Also let there be the option of paying via cash, banker’s cheque or credit card. Each customer may have a preference for a specific payment mode.

Service

When it comes to encouraging retention and customer loyalty to your brand it is the after sales service that is most important. Many customers feel that a company loses interest in them as soon as they make the final payment for their purchase. This does not encourage them to buy from the company again. What needs to be done is to make the customer realize that the company is just as interested in pampering them even after the sale has been completed. A well trained team can make this a reality.

Author biography:

Sarika Periwal represents KarmaCRM, an online CRM service for small businesses and individuals. Karma offers a powerful and feature-rich backend system with an easy user interface. This tool can help you manage all 3 areas of your business efficiently. Contact us for more details or connect with us on Facebook or Twitter .