Always listen to your customers. Embrace or commission some quality market research and find out precisely what your buyers want to purchase. If it does come to the crunch and you realise you are not providing what your customers want, consider repackaging or even redesigning your product range to meet their exact needs. This should be reviewed regularly to ensure your small business product relevance.

Focus on your existing customers. Research has found that it costs 5 times more to find new customers than it does to keep your existing ones. They are by far your highest potential for revenue so pamper and nurture them, working tirelessly to build the relationship with one off clients to try and gain their repeat business. Spend far more time on current clients than sourcing new business.

Encourage customers to refer your business to prospective new clients. This is by far the most potent and certainly cost effective way of marketing yourself with the objective of gaining new business. Follow up on referrals fast, politely and with relentless focus to maximise the return from the exercise. Consider incentivising the referrals for both parties if it leads to a sale.

A simple and effective way of rewarding your customers is to send them an expression of your gratitude and let them know exactly how much value you put in having their business. This has the added effect of reminding them of your services, and if it’s sincere it should generate great loyalty and possibly new business too. You could also offer discounts as a reward for loyalty.

Carry out some analysis on your product range and client lists. There is a classic rule, the eighty/twenty rule from Pareto that generally applies. In these contexts it would imply that 80% of your business will come from 20% of your clients and that 80% of your profit will arise from 20% of your products.

Similarly, the majority of your business probably arises from a small proportion of you clients, along the same guidelines. Once you know this, adjust your business to maximise the effectiveness of product and clients.

How do you deal with complaints? Do you react with defensive body language and become agitated or do you grit your teeth and admit you made the mistake grudgingly. Perhaps a better approach would be to proactively deal with complaints and deliver a no quibble solution regardless of the validity of the complaint. This could be the difference between losing or retaining a customer, and also the difference between that customer recommending you to all and sundry based on their experience, or bad mouthing you to even more potential customers because of the terrible service they received.

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