So in our last article we introduced two techniques to ensure that you lose far fewer customers, those technique are

• At Risk Roster
• Stickiness

If you missed the first part to this article then you can find it here:

https://sales-icon.com/2019/03/05/try-this-and-youll-lose-fewer-customers/

In this article we’re going to be addressing the topic of stickiness and how this strategy can diminish how many customers you lose.

Stickiness

Have you ever lost a sale because the customer has said something like

• “It’s better the devil you know”

Or maybe something of this nature. I’m certain you’ll have experienced something like this. When your prospect has invested time in you to assess the market, but then after all the rigmarole they opt to stay with whom they use now.

Why is this? Why do some prospects not opt to change despite how much you do?

Well within the psychology of sales, every human emotion and action is underpinned by their desire to escape pain and attain a pleasure state of mind. It underpins everything we do.

So if a buyer is very happy with their incumbent supplier it’s incredibly unlikely that we can encourage them to move to us, just the pain of moving to you will be too much adversity. However, if they have a host of pain, things like poor customer service, or missing service level agreements etc then their level of pain may outweigh the adversity to change to you.

It’s all about the adversity balance

• Negative Adversity Balance
  • There’s more adversity to change than there is to stay the same

• Positive Adversity Balance
  • There’s less adversity to change to change than there is to stay the same

If we tip the balance whereby there is less pain to change then we have a chance of winning the sale. So before we explain anything more it’s important to understand the adversity balance and how it works. Irrespective of how great you’re at sales, you’ll struggle to win a sale where there’s a negative adversity balance.

This can be summed up by saying

• the more adversity to change, the more likely the buyer is to stay the same

This is where stickiness comes in. This is the key to retaining customers, becoming sticky simple means to build up a customers adversity to change.

Now of course the best strategy for creating stickiness is to provide a fantastic customer experience, so above all else, focus on this!

But other strategies that you can also adopt to become more sticky are:

Cross-selling

Believe it or not, by selling the customer more things it means that your business is harder to lift and shift to another provider. Can that other provider provide all of those products or services? If so is their service better? Or can they offer this at the same or more cost effective price? What’re the implications of changing so much? They’re the questions a customer will ask themselves when you’re selling them multiple things. It becomes a much bigger move for them and hence creates much more adversity to change.

Value-add Advice

Just because you provide X widget or service doesn’t mean that it should be the extent to your relationship with the customer. Most of the sales icons that we work with build such level of value-add with customers that it develops a massive amount of adversity to change. So focus on adding value through advice to your customer base. What’s the market doing? What’re the trends? What are other competitors doing? What can help them get the most out of their investments? Simply the advice you give, on a consistent basis can be the reason why a customer stays with you. Your advice can build your negative adversity balance to ring-fence your customer from competition.

Longevity

The longer you work with someone, the more adversity they will have to change. So focus on long term relationships as opposed to quick wins and making a quick buck! A customer with an incumbent of 10 years is much harder to displace than that of 2 years.

There are many other strategies you can adopt to become stickier with customers, but applying these three should put you in a good position.

If you have any strategies of your own that you’d be kind enough to share then please do!

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