Imagine being able to find a source of customers that costs you absolutely nothing in marketing terms. You don’t have to advertise to them, send them samples, arrange meetings or go through the whole sales cycle. These amazing customers just hand you a stream of work and let you get on with it.

What’s really amazing is that these perfect customers exist. Who are they? Quite simply, your existing clients.

There’s no doubt about it, people who have bought from you already are the best customers you will ever have. You know that they like the service you have to offer, you’ve proven your skills and expertise, and you’ve already incurred the overhead of marketing. From here on, it’s all profit.

Research shows that it costs 5 to 10 times more to acquire a new customer than to get more business from one you already have.

Who can argue with economics like that?

So looking after people who have already committed to buying from you is of vital importance. The first job you undertake for a customer may not be very profitable. The client is likely to give you a smaller project to start with, to reduce the risk to a minimum, plus you have all the sale costs to consider. But the next job will probably be bigger, and your costs virtually nil. If the client goes on to give you work on a regular basis, your return on investment could be substantial indeed.

Let’s say a new customer becomes a regular client, giving you work worth on average around $2000 a month. If that arrangement continues over a number of years, the business could be worth $100,000 or more. A few clients like that, and you’re well on your way to your first million dollars.

But this can only happen if you take care of those customers. No matter how good your performance has been over a period of time, you are only as good as your last job. So to ensure that you make more money from your existing customers, you have to work on turning them all into long-term clients.

There are many facets to this, but one of the most important of all, is the service

Everybody talks about service, but few people actually deliver service of any quality.

Service is not about saying ‘have a nice day’, or adding superfluous touches to cover up inadequacies. It’s about understanding customer requirements, and being genuinely committed to meeting them.

As a bare minimum, of course, you should deliver on your promises – on time and on budget. But just meeting this basic requirement is not enough. You shouldn’t just deliver – you should over deliver.

If you can delight your customers – or better still astonish them – you will be well on your way to winning repeat business.

Remember that in business:

You cannot service too much

You cannot educate enough

You cannot inform too much

You cannot offer too much follow up, or follow through too far

You cannot make ordering too easy

You cannot make working with you too desirable

Making a commitment to over-delivering may seem like a substantial undertaking. The reward, however, is the prospect of lifetime customers – people who come back to you time and time again, because they know that you will deliver the level of service they need.

The secrets of good customer service begin with seeing things from the customers’ point of view. Try putting yourself in your clients’ shoes.

What is that they really want from you? Delivering good work is just part of the requirement.

In essence, they want you to make their lives easier. They want you to relieve them of all the stress, worry and issues associated with your part of the project. They’re not buying your professional skill – they are paying for a complete solution to a problem they face. That means taking total responsibility for managing your end of the project, dealing with issues that arise and presenting the client with a comprehensive solution.

You can help in this respect by offering to be available whenever the client needs to speak to you. Providing your home and cell phone numbers can give the client the reassurance of knowing that you can be contacted if the need arises. In practice, clients will generally respect your private life, and won’t call you on weekends without good reason. But just knowing that you are available if required can help enormously.

Make it easy to do business with you in planning your procedures round client requirements. If you are a creative professional, for example, clients will often expect you to make revisions and amendments to work at short notice. Build some time into your schedule to allow for this, so that you don’t have to say ‘no’ to a client in a hurry. There’s no point in doing great work in the first instance if you aren’t there to help the client meet the final, immovable deadline.

You should also be realistic in making promises. The client may be under pressure, and ask you to produce work to an urgent deadline. However, you should not allow yourself to be pressurized into meeting impossible timescales. If you are a few hours late delivering, clients won’t remember how difficult the deadline was they will only remember that you made a promise, and failed to keep it. It’s much better to tell the client what you can achieve, then work together on finding a suitable solution.

Remember that you’re looking for a long-term relationship, not a short-term profit. So showing a client how costs can be reduced will have real benefits, even if it reduces your fee for a particular project. This will demonstrate your commitment to delivering good service to the client, and will pay dividends in future projects, where the client is likely to trust you to deliver the right result.

The importance of good communications

Perhaps the most important aspect of customer service is communication. They way you handle your everyday contacts with customers will have a huge impact on the way they value your service.

First of all, be sure to explain to the client exactly what you can and can’t do for them, and how long it will take. Discuss the project in detail, so that both parties are aware of what is expected, and how it will be delivered. To you, it may seem obvious that things need to be done a certain way – you’ve done it a hundred times before, after all. But to the client, the experience of working with a professional freelancer may be an entirely new one.

Once the project is in progress, be sure to stay in touch, even if it’s just to confirm that everything is progressing well. Regular updates will allow the client to relax, and feel confident that the job will be completed in a professional manner.

Staying in touch is particularly important if a problem arises. If you think you are going to have a problem meeting a deadline, or there is some other obstacle preventing you from completing the work as agreed, get in touch straightaway to explain the situation. If you do this early enough, it is often possible to work around the problem, and retain the clients’ confidence. But if you leave it to the last moment to inform the client, you are likely to experience a backlash.

Turning a disaster into a success

With the best will in the world, there will occasionally be jobs that don’t work out quite as expected. Perhaps external factors intervene to mess up your schedule, or you simply find that the clients’ expectations differed from yours.

As we have just seen, many of these issues can be avoided by discussing expectations before hand, and keeping the client informed of any issues as they arise.

But there will still be times when problems occur. Whatever the reason, once in a while you may find yourself with an unhappy client.

So what should you do? Shrug your shoulders and move on to the next project? If you do that, you not only lose the client, you may also lose part or even all of the fee for the project. So it’s much better to try and manage the situation, and turn an unhappy customer into a happy one.

The first step is to acknowledge the problem. There’s nothing more infuriating than to tell someone that there is an issue, and to have your comments ignored. Trying to pass the blame on to someone else, or even back to the client, will just make the situation worse. If you’ve made a mistake, be prepared to admit it, and apologize.

Next, give the client a chance to express his feelings. If he is angry, he will want to clear the air by telling you exactly what he thinks of the situation.

Only when he has had a chance to vent his anger in this way can you move on to the next stage, finding a solution.

Most situations can be resolved, but this may involve you doing additional work beyond your original expectation. If you are prepared to do this to redress the problem, however, the client will see the situation in a very different light. In fact, you can turn an angry customer into a happy one.

Instead of losing a customer, you may then gain a long-term client. After all, this client now knows that you can be trusted to resolve issues, and deliver services that really is second to none.

The power of referrals

The ability to generate repeat business is one of the great advantages of having long- term clients. But that’s not all. Over a period of time, your customers will come into contact with many other people who could use your services to advantage. If you have a good working relationship, they will be happy to refer you to other colleagues, resulting in new business possibilities for you.

Referrals are hard to beat as a marketing technique. For one thing, they don’t cost you anything. Your long-term clients act as a volunteer sales force, recommending your services and bringing you new business from unexpected sources free of charge. In terms of return on investment, that is hard to beat.
Secondly, they are likely to be high-quality prospects. If they are mixed in the same circles as your existing best customers, they may have similar requirements, budgets and expectations. So these are prospective clients that you really want to talk to.

Better still, they are often people that you would not get to speak to without your clients’ introduction. They may be hard to get through to, or you may simply be unaware of their existence.

Best of all, they’ve already half-sold on your services. Instead of having to sift through the entries in the Yellow Pages in the hope of finding someone suitable, they have come to you on the recommendation.

They already know one satisfied customer, and would like to share the same experience.

All in all, then, referral business is something you should place a high value on. So it’s well worth persuading your long-term customers to recommend you. Ensure that they have your business card, so that they can easily pass your details along. If you have a website with an URL that’s easy to remember, so much the better. Even if they don’t have your card, they can then pass on your web address.

More importantly, don’t be afraid to ask for referrals. When you get to the end of a successful project, ask your client to suggest other people who could use your services to advantage. If people are genuinely happy with your work, they will be pleased to do so.

So the difference in value between a one-off customer and a long-term client is vast indeed. If you invest some time and effort into building strong relationships with good clients, you will receive handsome dividends in terms of future business.