Episode Transcript
Key Takeaways
- Not all customers should be treated the same due to their varying value to your business.
- The Pareto Principle suggests 80% of your income comes from 20% of your customers.
- Super buyers and super referrers are crucial for business growth.
- Tracking and rewarding customer referrals can significantly expand your client base.
- Creating moments of surprise and delight can lead to lasting customer stories.
The Importance of Customer Stories
Try to make sure that you’re surprising and delighting them, because above and beyond just a straight referral system, there are the stories that your company tells, and then there are the stories that the customers will tell on the back of their experiences. Some of those stories, if they’re done right, can carry on forever.
Treating Customers Unfairly
Welcome back to another episode of Practice Perfect. Today, we’re going to discuss why you should treat your customers unfairly so you can grow your business. Not all customers should be treated the same, because the reality is that not all customers have the same value to your business.
Some customers will help you grow your business, some will hold you back from growth. You’ve got people that buy, and then people that will just whine, complain, moan, leave negative reviews. Some people just suck up all your time by being overly anxious or trying to find fault in what you’re doing. Those are not the customers you want.
Understanding the Pareto Principle
What we’re really talking about here is something called the Pareto Principle. The Pareto Principle was named after Italian economist Wilfred Pareto. It’s also known as the 80-20 rule, the law of the vital few, or the principle of factor sparsity. What the 80-20 rule, which is commonly how it’s referred to in business states, is that roughly 80 percent of the effects come from 20 percent of the causes.
What does this mean in your business? Well, 80 percent of your business, 80 percent of your income typically will come from about 20 percent of your customers. You have to identify them and treat them unfairly. That is to say, advantageously.
You have to identify them and treat them unfairly. That is to say, advantageously.
Focusing on Valuable Customers
You want to pay special attention to them. You want to give them benefits. What typically happens is that the squeaky wheel typically gets the grease. In any business, the person that complains will typically get the most attention.
The complaints are often also responsible for how you set policy. Sometimes your staff will get a very strong emotional charge from a negative experience with a customer, and then they’ll think that they need to apply that to everybody. But nothing could be further from the truth because these people that are causing these issues in your practice are the ones that are going to keep you from growth.
Strategies for Super Buyers
What I want to focus on is really who you should be paying attention to, and there are two types of customers that I want you to pay special attention to, and those are super buyers and super referrers. So let’s get into each one and see what they mean.
A super buyer is somebody that buys everything from you. If you’ve got a service, if you’re doing a new laser, if you’re going to offer any kind of special in open house, this is the kind of buyer that always comes back. They love your practice. They love you.
Building Loyalty with Super Referrers
The next we’re gonna talk about super referrers. Now a super referrer may or may not be a super buyer. Okay, this is where I would also lump in things like social media influencers if they’re actually sending you people.
And super referrers are the ones that really, really help you grow your practice because not only are they buying and they may just be okay buyers, average buyers, right? So they’re adding some income, they may be super buyers, but more importantly, they may be referring two to 10 other people into your practice over time.
And super referrers are the ones that really, really help you grow your practice.
Encouraging Referrals
The first thing you’ve gotta do to identify super referrers is make sure that you get some sort of tracking in place for each of your clients and put the data somewhere that your staff can access and use. So it doesn’t help you to have a patient file either electronically or a paper file that has a list of 20 people that this individual referred if your staff can’t act on it, if they can’t label them and act upon it.
Creating Moments of Delight
Another thing you have to be cognizant of is the fact that when you’re asking for a referral, what’s really happening is that you’re asking for that patient to do the work for you, right? You’re asking them to go out and find you, their friends, their family, their coworkers, and bring them into your practice.
Try to make sure that you’re surprising and delighting them because above and beyond just a straight referral system, there are the stories that your company tells. And then there are the stories that the customers will tell on the back of their experiences. And some of those stories, if they’re done right, can carry on forever.