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Mastering Client Retention: The Secret to Sustainable Business Growth · Business for Humans

• 0:00
  Well, hello. We are here together again. I am Jamie Gennaro.
• 0:07
  I'm a business coach and consultant.
• 0:09
  I work with small businesses who are launching, and I also work with established
• 0:16
  companies who are growing.
• 0:19
  So this podcast episode is for all of you.
• 0:24
  If you're in a leadership role, and you also influence sales and growth in the organization,
• 0:32
  then also stay here and listen to the rest of this podcast because this is going
• 0:39
  to be very, very valuable.
• 0:41
  We talk a lot about marketing, right?
• 0:46
  I talk specifically a lot about marketing because that's my background.
• 0:50
  And it's such a fundamental part of building your business. And if you don't
• 0:56
  spend time focused on it, your business just isn't going to grow.
• 1:00
  So the more time you put marketing to the back burner, the slower the growth.
• 1:04
  But you cannot have marketing without sales, right? Without a follow-up.
• 1:12
  So marketing brings in the leads and sales lands those leads and turns people into clients.
• 1:21
  I don't want to focus too much today about that free follow-up sales process.
• 1:29
  What I want to talk about today is retention because I worked with a client
• 1:35
  last week on something that I'm now going to trademark that she reminded me that I said,
• 1:42
  which was this idea of re-energizing your accounts.
• 1:48
  So let's go back a step.
• 1:52
  When you have clients, right? Or if you don't have any clients and you're at
• 1:57
  launch, we have to work really hard to secure our first clients, right?
• 2:03
  But then once someone is bought in on you and they know you and they're game
• 2:09
  for whatever new thing you're bringing to the table because they know your value,
• 2:13
  that is where I want to focus today's episode. That is client retention.
• 2:20
  It's so much easier to keep a client than it is to get a new client.
• 2:27
  And not enough time is spent in especially small businesses focusing on this.
• 2:36
  Because somewhere in our brain, we think that business development and growth
• 2:41
  should come from all new business, new clients, new relationships,
• 2:47
  new networking, conversations,
• 2:50
  new partnerships,
• 2:52
  opportunities, right?
• 2:53
  This is where our brain goes when we think about business development.
• 2:58
  But if you spent three hours a week focusing on your current clients and how
• 3:06
  you can re-energize that work.
• 3:11
  And grow those accounts, and also get testimonials and referrals from those
• 3:20
  accounts, now they're doing even more heavy lifting.
• 3:25
  So acquiring a new customer costs about five times more than retaining an existing customer.
• 3:36
  If you increase your retention rate, So let's say you have 10 clients and you
• 3:43
  want five of them to stay on board.
• 3:46
  That's a 50% retention rate.
• 3:49
  If right now your retention rate is 10% and you increase it to 15%,
• 3:54
  that can equal a profit increase of 25% to 75%.
• 4:02
  It's directly related.
• 4:05
  How much you can and retain your clients is going to give you more profit.
• 4:13
  It is literally the easiest path to profit that nobody looks at.
• 4:19
  I mean, not nobody, but when you're in this new business, I've got to grow spin,
• 4:26
  you forget that you have these amazing relationships.
• 4:30
  So I will use myself as an an example. It took me some time to get my business
• 4:36
  off the ground because I was in a new space that I hadn't been in before.
• 4:42
  I completely shifted my career.
• 4:45
  I went from advertising into consulting and coaching, right?
• 4:50
  I went from working with basically...
• 4:55
  Scale up advertising agencies that were on their way to merge or sale to much
• 5:01
  smaller companies that were making about a tenth of what these huge corporate
• 5:07
  conglomerate advertising agencies were making.
• 5:10
  It was a really big shift for me. So to get to that first place where I had,
• 5:16
  let's say, five clients was hard.
• 5:20
  Like zero to 100,000 in your business. Zero to 10,000 in your business is the hardest jump.
• 5:28
  From 10 to 100 is much easier.
• 5:32
  And the reason is because you have clients. Once you crack the code of how to
• 5:37
  get clients, then you just have to keep doing that.
• 5:41
  Just Just double down on the thing that worked.
• 5:44
  So I worked really hard to get my first clients. And then I offered them a program.
• 5:49
  And when they were done with the program, I had nothing else to offer them.
• 5:53
  I was just like, cool, you're done. And they just moved on.
• 5:59
  So what I did last year was I started a membership program.
• 6:03
  So I have never really had a
• 6:06
  lot of luck and success with running group programs as a first engagement.
• 6:12
  People really like working with me one-on-one. They see tons of transformation and change.
• 6:19
  I had a new client talk to me today in a discovery call.
• 6:23
  It was our second discovery call. And she said, oh my God, I feel so much better after talking to you.
• 6:29
  You're so good at your job. I've talked to her for 40 minutes total.
• 6:33
  So people just, they like the level of engagement engagement and what I can offer them one-on-one.
• 6:40
  But I know that I need a group program. So rather than starting with a group
• 6:45
  program, I moved my one-on-one clients into a group program once they were done
• 6:52
  with their one-on-one program.
• 6:54
  And it is the most amazing thing I've done in my business so far.
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  Because what did I do? I basically turned my retention rate from zero to I would say 95%.
• 7:09
  Most people that go through my program sign up for the membership afterwards
• 7:15
  because then they go from more intense coaching with me when they have really
• 7:19
  big goals that they want to accomplish to maintenance,
• 7:23
  like maintaining those goals and incrementally growing on those goals.
• 7:27
  So it's a no-brainer for them once they know my value to go,
• 7:33
  oh, great, I'm going from more intense,
• 7:35
  focused, custom coaching to they still meet with me once a month,
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  and then they're part of the group program,
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  which is a once a month session, group coaching session with all of their peers,
• 7:50
  which is also super helpful.
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  So when I went from zero to 95%, what's amazing is then I can also take that
• 7:58
  group of people and go, hey, do you guys want this other thing?
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  It's not just about selling. For me, it's about value.
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  So now I have this group of my VIP, most amazing favorite clients,
• 8:12
  because if you're not somebody I really feel like I can help,
• 8:15
  you're not likely going to to be invited into the membership program.
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  So if I just don't see that I'm going to be able to provide you ongoing value,
• 8:25
  you're not going to come to the membership program.
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  So right now I have this group of people that I know I can support.
• 8:32
  We've seen transformation together. We're working really well together.
• 8:37
  So now I can start to think what else can be supportive to them.
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  So I don't want you to think this is a constant upsell just for the sake of
• 8:47
  upselling. I want to constantly be providing my clients value.
• 8:52
  So now someone in my group membership asked, hey, Jamie, could you also offer
• 9:00
  us the option of setting up additional one-off sessions with you?
• 9:05
  Because that's not something I do in the normal program cycle.
• 9:11
  I like to work with people over three to six months because that's how we see change.
• 9:17
  But once you've gone through that program with me, sure, let's do one-off coaching
• 9:22
  sessions according to what you need.
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  So that's something that one of my clients offered me, right?
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  Like, hey, this is something that would be valuable to me. Can you offer this?
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  Rather than me constantly offering things to people that they may or may not
• 9:38
  need, now I have this group of people and I can ask them, how can I support you?
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  What else do you need? How else can I help you?
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  So I have this amazing group now that I can be offering things to,
• 9:54
  maybe offering them beta programs or testing things with them.
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  So this is helping my business grow.
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  What I also have from this group of people is longevity. I know them.
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  There's a lot of value in the amount of time I've been working with them because
• 10:11
  I can help guide them when things come up and they've come up before.
• 10:17
  I can point that out. I know some of the pitfalls that they've had to deal with.
• 10:22
  And so I can help them get over those things a little easier because I know the way they work.
• 10:27
  I know their process. I know their business. I know their clients a lot of time.
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  And so there's just so much added value in the length of time I work with these
• 10:37
  people. So this is retention.
• 10:40
  You're giving additional value to your clients.
• 10:44
  So let's go back to this idea of re-energizing your accounts.
• 10:49
  So what happens when you work with people over a long period of time is that
• 10:54
  you might get a little lazy or you might get a little sluggish.
• 10:59
  And I am not speaking for myself because I actually don't have this problem
• 11:04
  because I am constantly re-energized by my clients because of the nature of
• 11:09
  the work we do. It's always different.
• 11:11
  We're always looking for new goals to aspire to. We're always cracking open new problems.
• 11:19
  So it's actually not an issue you for me, but I have some clients that work
• 11:24
  with, they're in the services industry and they might be supporting a client
• 11:29
  on, I don't know, different levels of effort and they might be on a retainer.
• 11:34
  And so what happens after years of being on, let's say a marketing retainer,
• 11:39
  you might start to lose momentum because you just can't find new solutions.
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  You're sort of rinse and repeating every month of the same kind of initiatives
• 11:51
  because you just don't have the energy to sit down and think about their problems
• 11:58
  in a new way because you've been supporting them with the same problems the same way for so long.
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  So at some point, if you want to keep these clients, if you do really feel like
• 12:08
  they're great for your business and you like what they do and and it feels like
• 12:12
  a good fit, then you want to figure out how to reinvigorate that work.
• 12:19
  A lot of times what that means is looking at what your core skills are and making
• 12:25
  sure that you're servicing them with your core skills and best talents.
• 12:32
  In a small business, what happens oftentimes is that you might be working with
• 12:36
  a big client and want to support them.
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  And so you say yes to everything, like every tactic, all the busy work,
• 12:43
  all the things that really shouldn't be on your plate, you just say yes to because
• 12:47
  you want to keep the client happy.
• 12:49
  So what you can do to re-energize one of those accounts is to set new boundaries
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  and say, listen, all these tactics, let's just delegate those to your junior people.
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  And where I'm going to be best served and where you're going to get the best
• 13:05
  value out of me is if I'm in a more strategic position with you.
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  So here's what we're going to do. We're going to unpack this.
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  We're going to look at this. We're going to solve these problems.
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  And I'm going to put all those tactics on someone else.
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  So that's a way for you to get more energy into the account because now you're
• 13:23
  working on things that are aligned with your talents rather than just doing
• 13:29
  busy work that's making you feel sluggish and not very impactful on their business.
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  This is a great way to continue to build retention attention and partnership
• 13:41
  with your clients as well, because they know you're watching out for them.
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  You're not just collecting a paycheck or a monthly retainer and then not looking
• 13:52
  at the way you can best serve them or create additional value for them, right?
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  When they can see that you're sitting down to sort of evaluate how you're doing
• 14:04
  and what you're working on and why, that's already increased value.
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  They already know that they are front of mind for you. You're trying to figure
• 14:16
  out the best way to serve them.
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  And sometimes that's just by setting boundaries and giving them actually a higher
• 14:22
  quality service rather than something that is not moving the needle forward for them.
• 14:29
  So in consulting or coaching work, what that might look like is sitting down
• 14:35
  and sort of evaluating what they're paying for what you're offering, right?
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  And maybe you need to just recalibrate and move some of those things around.
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  Reassess a package that gets you as excited as it might get them, right?
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  Like, hey, you know what? I think a better way for us to be working together
• 14:57
  is more in this capacity.
• 14:59
  What if we did this? What if we did this retreat instead of doing these one-off sessions?
• 15:04
  What if we did a longer engagement, like over a half day, right?
• 15:09
  You can start to mold and shape the accounts that you've been working on for
• 15:15
  a while so that you can continue to work on them.
• 15:19
  If you're not getting any energy from them and it doesn't feel like a good fit,
• 15:23
  that's a different problem to solve.
• 15:25
  How do you close out those relationships and start to move on?
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  There's a lot of fear that may come up and scarcity.
• 15:31
  That's a different problem. So we're talking about re-energizing client work
• 15:36
  that you do want to continue, that you want to go forward with.
• 15:40
  And I would say before you quit on a client because it feels hard or it feels misaligned,
• 15:48
  do an evaluation of the work that you're doing with that client and see if there's
• 15:54
  an opportunity to turn it into something different.
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  See if there's an opportunity to make it work better for you in a way that could
• 16:02
  also provide more value to them.
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  Because maybe quitting them because you you feel frustrated with the way the
• 16:09
  workflow is going, that's not going to be best for them, obviously.
• 16:14
  So if you can come up with a solution that allows them to still get time with
• 16:19
  you and have the impact of your work, but it's at a little bit of a different
• 16:23
  workflow, it's totally worth asking.
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  Because 100%, if you've been bringing value to them over time,
• 16:30
  they're going to prefer that you change the workflow.
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  So that they don't have to lose you. And I would say it's the same thing if you're an employee.
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  If you're about to quit your job because it's not working for you,
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  because it's not flexible enough, because you're overwhelmed,
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  before you quit, go back and see if you can make a shift to make it work better for you,
• 16:55
  to re-energize the way you're working and the approach that you're taking with your employer.
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  It works for that too.
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  So once you can re-energize this work with your clients, you have a better chance
• 17:11
  of holding onto them over the longer term, right?
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  Which is better for your business because you don't want to have to spend five
• 17:19
  times more to capture a new client every time you need work.
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  Imagine that you landed five clients and those five clients you could just work
• 17:33
  with for the next five years and you love them and you know the impact you could
• 17:37
  make on their business and they're paying you well.
• 17:39
  And then that was it. You just had a stable, secure business.
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  You made your monthly nugget from five clients and you never had to go out and
• 17:49
  do business development or new business or land new business.
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  Wouldn't that be amazing? Depending on the size of your business,
• 17:56
  but even if you have a larger business, if you had five clients paying the amount
• 18:03
  necessary for you to keep the lights on at your business and make a profit,
• 18:07
  wouldn't they be so much better than constantly running the race of,
• 18:12
  oh, let's land a small project here and a small project there and a small project there.
• 18:15
  Go after the bigger ticket projects and then have less of them and then retain them. right?
• 18:21
  That's just a really solid model.
• 18:24
  It sounds so simple, right? When you just boil it down, like,
• 18:27
  okay, five clients, how much would I have to make from each client?
• 18:31
  What sort of program or package could I put together to make that.
• 18:36
  Very valuable to them. Okay, great. That's it. You're done.
• 18:41
  But so many people just ignore their current clients and the opportunities they
• 18:47
  might have with them because they just are not thinking that way.
• 18:52
  And there's always an opportunity to provide more value to your current clients.
• 18:58
  There's always a surprise and delight opportunity too.
• 19:03
  And one thing that I do is I don't ask for referrals. It's something I need to get better at.
• 19:09
  I don't ask for referrals, but I get a lot of them.
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  And so what I do, because I don't ask for them or offer anything for them,
• 19:17
  when I get a referral, I know it's so authentic, right?
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  Because that means somebody is just saying good things about And someone else
• 19:25
  is saying, oh, I need that.
• 19:27
  I need that help. I need that level of support.
• 19:30
  And so what I do for people that send me a referral, well, now it's no surprise.
• 19:35
  I'm saying it out loud probably, but I just offer them a free session.
• 19:40
  So I'm not like ahead of time asking
• 19:42
  them for anything I'm just surprising them with something
• 19:46
  afterwards like oh my goodness thank you so much
• 19:49
  for opening up the door with this person they
• 19:51
  seem great you don't even wait for the work to come through I just tell them
• 19:59
  let's book a session because I want to keep my relationship with that person
• 20:03
  the more I'm meeting with them the more I I know how I can make an impact and help them,
• 20:09
  which means they're talking about me more often because I'm making more impact.
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  The best thing, I mean, really the biggest gift in my life, in my work,
• 20:19
  is getting a client to tell another potential client what I've done to help them.
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  And when that person knows my client, like if they're friends,
• 20:30
  they come to me and they say, I saw the change.
• 20:35
  I watched the transformation happen from the outside. This just happened to
• 20:40
  me. So I had a client that I worked with for two years.
• 20:43
  We worked through a lot of career change and burnout. And I.
• 20:51
  She was on an incredible journey. I mean, she really had a lot of physical symptoms
• 20:56
  of burnout and needed to find a job that was more aligned with who she was and
• 21:02
  the way she needed to be working and all the things.
• 21:06
  And it took some time to get there because of her journey, right?
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  And for me as her coach, of course, I see the transformation.
• 21:15
  I see it. I see it in the first 15 minutes when they unlock something, right?
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  And they have a realization about something, and then they start taking action
• 21:23
  towards this goal in a different way with more momentum.
• 21:27
  But when someone from the outside can see that, that it's so clear and obvious
• 21:32
  from the outside that somebody is making huge changes in their life and people
• 21:37
  from the outside can see it, that is the reward.
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  Because I know my clients can see it, but when someone from the outside is like,
• 21:45
  holy moly, I saw that happening.
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  It's the best. I mean, really, I can't ask for a better referral than people
• 21:55
  just living their lives and through the change and transformation that's happening
• 21:59
  when they're working with me.
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  And it's a little bit more obvious in the business career coaching sense because
• 22:07
  there are tangible outcomes, right?
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  People are looking for new jobs and they're looking for an increase in revenue,
• 22:15
  or they're looking to grow their business.
• 22:17
  But there's also a mind shift that happens when you're meeting these goals.
• 22:21
  You just feel better about yourself. You have more confidence.
• 22:24
  You have your own back. You're disciplining yourself because you're seeing the change happen.
• 22:30
  But it's so cool when someone comes to me, and I don't know when I get a referral.
• 22:36
  I mean, I know because they market when they book a call with me,
• 22:40
  they can choose a referral. But I don't know who, I don't know where it's coming from.
• 22:44
  And usually when people refer me, they don't,
• 22:46
  tell me. Because they might refer me and it might take that person months to get in touch with me.
• 22:52
  So I don't know where it's coming from. And then it's just so cool to hear these stories.
• 22:57
  So don't take that for granted.
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  Referrals can be a really, really big driving force of your business along with testimonials.
• 23:08
  These are all coming from building strong relationships with your current clients.
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  Re-energize these relationships.
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  Work on retention as a part of your strategy.
• 23:21
  If you have clients right now, hold on to them.
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  And not in a desperate way, but hold on to them in a loving hug.
• 23:30
  I love working with you. I love working with you. I want to keep working with
• 23:35
  you. I think we're making huge impact.
• 23:37
  I don't want to lose the momentum, right? It's coming from this energy of like,
• 23:42
  I see that this is working and I don't want you to let go, right?
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  Like I want you to keep having this momentum. I want to be able to keep helping
• 23:50
  support you. How can I do that?
• 23:53
  This is the case with any service, any service that you're offering.
• 23:57
  You're looking for ways you can create more value, ways you can really continue
• 24:03
  to foster and support this client with what it is that they're working towards.
• 24:11
  So when you're looking at your marketing and sales strategy,
• 24:15
  I want you just to pause and think about what you're spending in time and resources
• 24:21
  and finances and look at how much of that is being spent towards new relationships
• 24:28
  versus existing relationships.
• 24:31
  And if you're a small business, push the effort level towards existing clients.
• 24:41
  75% of your current sales strategy.
• 24:45
  And if you don't have any sales strategy, just start chipping away at your current clients.
• 24:51
  How do you keep them engaged over the long term?
• 24:54
  How do you stabilize that relationship? How do you add more value?
• 24:59
  This is huge because again, it's from that zero to 10,000 point of making any
• 25:05
  money in your business, getting any clients in your business, if you're at launch,
• 25:10
  that is the hardest road to hoe. Is that the phrase?
• 25:16
  It's the hardest rock to push uphill is just getting those first clients.
• 25:20
  And then once you do, the momentum is going.
• 25:24
  Then you're doing your work. Because up until then, you're just doing the work
• 25:28
  of trying to get clients in the door.
• 25:30
  Once you have clients, you actually get to do the work that you started the business to do, right?
• 25:35
  And then that's a whole shift. So once you have those clients and you're doing
• 25:40
  that work that you love, that you're so good at, let's just foster and retain those relationships.
• 25:47
  It's funny how it just seems like total common sense. And if you're already
• 25:52
  doing this well, then amazing.
• 25:55
  I mean, it is a normal part of what most businesses do is they spend a certain
• 26:01
  amount of time on retention and a certain amount of time on new clients, new customers.
• 26:08
  But it's just a good reminder.
• 26:11
  Spend a lot of time with the people who already know and love you.
• 26:15
  You don't want to lose them.
• 26:17
  They're amazing. And if you're having conflict with whether or not you want
• 26:23
  to keep working with those people, remember, Remember, go back and give yourself
• 26:27
  the opportunity to re-energize that relationship,
• 26:31
  set new boundaries, set new workflow, new process, new ways of working so that
• 26:38
  it works for you and you can keep working with that client over the long term.
• 26:43
  I feel like this is so big and so important and really critical to your business scaling,
• 26:50
  over time, like keeping a way to continue working with these people over time,
• 26:56
  whether that means delegating the
• 26:57
  work at some point and then putting your skills to work somewhere else.
• 27:04
  That's also one of those re-energizing moments. if you need to delegate certain
• 27:09
  tasks in that work to other people so that you can work with that client over time.
• 27:16
  I hope this was helpful. It's such a good reminder to me.
• 27:19
  I feel like over the last couple of weeks through working with new clients and
• 27:25
  discussing sales strategies and tactics, it's a great reminder for me too.
• 27:31
  I love my clients, adore them, and I want to offer as as many opportunities
• 27:37
  to continue to create value for them as I can.
• 27:40
  And it's a good reminder for me to lean into that and spend more time there.
• 27:45
  So if you're one of my clients and you're listening to this,
• 27:48
  which I know a lot of you do, and you're like, hey, I have an idea of how you
• 27:54
  could better support me, just reach out. Let me know.
• 27:58
  Let's keep it an open conversation because that is what I want to do.
• 28:03
  I want to keep supporting and creating value and helping you reach your goals because I adore you.
• 28:10
  I absolutely adore you. And you know it because it's just so fun.
• 28:16
  All the sessions, we crack so much open.
• 28:20
  It's so exciting and fun for me to watch you all thrive. And if you're not a
• 28:24
  client yet, jump on board, peeps.
• 28:28
  Feel the love. And again, keep this value-add piece pushing forward.
• 28:39
  And I am going to leave it at that. Talk to you next week.