You Have a Great Business, but Nobody Cares

I would like to share a disturbing little secret with you. Almost 70% of the people you do face-to-face business with will never speak to you again.

It's not that they didn't like you or get value from your services. It's simply that they just don't care. They've got other things on their mind: the kids need new clothes, the toilet needs repairing and the car's making that strange knocking sound again. And, of course, there is that big report due tomorrow.

These are the things that take up your customer's bandwidth. They haven't thought about you since you last spoke to them weeks ago.

But why wouldn't they think about you? Didn't that last marketing campaign get great feedback?

As the available research suggests, it's not that they don't like you; rather, they have simply forgotten you. By the way, the research I read indicated that, in general, only about 8% of customers would be dissatisfied with the product or service they received.

Let me illustrate. I recently worked with a company that has served over 3,000 clients in the past three years. In that time, it has never sent out a card, email or direct mail piece communicating with past customers. Yet the company still receives a third of its new business from referrals.

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Richard Banfield is a business development specialist with a focus on growing profits for early- to mid-stage global technology companies. Reach him at richard@freshtilledideas.com.