At one time, K-Mart was the dominate retailer in America. Before they lost their way ( and ended up bankrupt and purchased at a sales price by Sears ) they had passed Target, JC Penney, and many other retailers at being the biggest and the best. What was their secret to get new customers? THey built a system that was customer-friendly.

Herb Wardlow was the architech who for more then 10 years guided K-Mart as its president. He describes his secret to getting new business as being incredibly simple. Here is the formula: “Find out what your customers want and give it to them.. and hten some.” It’s building a system to accommodate your customers’ wants and needs, and then doing the many little extra things that will get even more customer to come to you. If you do things their way, you are guaranteed to have delighted customers.

Find out what yoru customers want and arrange your store and services to suit their needs.

Not every person is cut out ot help you prospect for new customers. You’ve been told before and you’ll hear it again, hire for attitude and train for aptitude. The people in yoru business who meet and greet customers have to do it with a smile. Prospecting for customers requires people with a pleasing, positive, and agreeable attitude. Anyone without that mindset needs to leave your business!
The only thing worst than allowing a rogue employee to destroy your attempts to get new customers is paying him or her to do it.

The best new customers are ones you already have. While some customer attrition is inevitable because customers move away, sell out , go bankrupt, or have other situations that you can’t control, you should never accpt a lost customer. Accept what you can’t control, you should never accept a lost customer. Accept what you can’t change, but never accept losses that are within your control.

Accepting customer attrition without trying to stem the tide can start a doward spiral. Learn to fight back, and renew those relationships! One easy way to do this is by learning to investigate and learn why customers might leave him in the first place. That information is invaluable to improving customer relationships, even if he loses the customer from which he learned the information.