Put in place an appreciation plan and system that touches your clients at least 4 times a year, if not more. It can be as simple as sending cards – physical cards in the mail. It’s not hard and it’s not expensive.

At the beginning of each year, I come up with an annual theme that encompasses what I want to achieve. This year, my theme was MM – Massive Momentum. I want to grow my business exponentially versus incrementally. I posted this on one of the LinkedIn forums, and someone suggested that I add the word “Magic” to it, so now it is MMM – Magic Massive Momentum.

When I added the extra “M”, light bulbs went off in my head. MM by itself felt heavy and tiring. It felt as if I had to do everything myself or it would not happen. As soon as the Magic was added, suddenly MMM was so much lighter. It felt like it wasn’t just me having to do everything to create Massive Momentum. I knew that I’d have a lot of help from others, and I had tapped into that leverage. It made my goal of exponential growth become realistic for me.

Setting Goals For Faster Sales

What has this to do with your own sales and sales growth? Everything. if you want exponential sales versus incremental sales. Everything, if you want to make more sales faster with less effort.

You see if you just focus on the sale in front of you, and once that sale is made, you rush off to the next one and so on, you will make sales and you may even get an incremental increase in your total. You might even achieve MM but – and this is a big one – you’ll soon be exhausted as you are doing everything. It all revolves around you. There is zero leverage with this sales approach. If you go on holidays, nothing will happen. If you are sick, nothing will be happening. You may have gained MM, but it’s only incremental and you have personally paid a big price.

The Magic Of Customer’s For Life

Now suppose that instead of just focusing on the sale in front of you, you focus on gaining a “Customer for Life”. When you gain a “Customer for Life”, they will buy more from you like magic. With very little extra effort on your part, the initial sale will have doubled, tripled, or more. What also happens like magic is that your “Customer for Life” starts raving about you to others. Then some of them also become your “Customers for Life”, and then like magic, they rave about you to others as well.

Now instead of you having to do everything, your customers are doing a lot of the selling activities for you. You’ve got free leverage. You could even go on holiday and some sales may come in without your usual effort. Your sales growth takes off as the sales are now starting to come in exponentially.  So the choice is yours. MM or MMM?

So what do you need to do to create a “Customer for Life”?

First, you need a sales process and philosophy that supports the “Customer for Life” approach. Most sales processes do not. Most are essentially a “hit and run” method and may even destroy the potential of future sales with a customer.

Second, you need to have a very important system in place or it will not work. If you don’t have this system in place, it’s very unlikely you will tap into exponential sales. It effectively adds fuel to your ‘Customer for Life’ fire. This system is one that builds your personal relationship with your customers and shows that you appreciate them.

Giving Appreciation Consistently

When you consistently and sincerely give appreciation to your customers, it will ignite their desire to give back. It simply follows the natural law of giving and receiving. Your customers will give back in a number of ways: they will give you more business, they will become raving fans, and they will tell others about you and recommend you. All this starts with giving appreciation consistently.

Put in place an appreciation plan and system that touches your clients at least 4 times a year, if not more. It can be as simple as sending cards – physical cards in the mail. It’s not hard and it’s not expensive. Yet together with a “Customer for Life” approach, the sales results can be exponential.Try it and watch the MMM happen in your sales!