One of the simplest ways to increase the number of customers you have is by investing in customer satisfaction. Note that I called it investing, not spending. The traditional definition of investing is putting money into another business expecting a return. But, before your give your money out to others to build their empire, put the positive cash flow right back in so you can build yours. The average customer will only tell about 1-3 people about their positive experience. Compared to a client with very little customer satisfaction will tell about 12 people in which about half won’t come to your restaurant. Simply increasing the customer satisfaction will lead you to about an average of 2 more clients a month, which may not sound like a lot compared to 400 but thats 24 more clients for that year. With several visits each month, each client can greatly increase the cash flow in your business. Coming back to the increasing revenue point, Elon Musk is a great example of reinvesting the surplus money he gets. In 2010, Musk received money after Paypal and Zip2’s acquisitions which was just a little north of $150 million dollars. He reinvested ALL of that money into his companies (Tesla, the Boring Company, SpaceX) to the point where he had to take personal loans from his friends and family to pay his bills. I’m not asking you to put yourself in debt, but take some of your surplus money and invest it into your business. And if you don't have any surplus money, you can still do this. Although I don’t recommend taking loans from the bank to invest in your business, I’d recommend you to get investors who are willing to wait a couple of years to get their money back with its return. We, at Rami Consulting Group work hard to make sure that our customers are getting the best service possible for our New York SEO clients. Now, how can you increase your customer satisfaction levels? Do a cost analysis. Not a cost benefit analysis, but a cost analysis. On a sheet of paper, Write down a list of where you spend your money and how much. At the very top, write down how much money you have coming in. After all the subtractions you can see that you have about $11,200 to work with. Now, with your cost analysis down on paper, look at it and figure out what are uncontrollable expenses and what are controllable expenses. Many people expect me to tell you that to make more money, you’re going to have to cut all of your controllable expenses, at least that’s what traditional business gurus tell you. That is completely WRONG. Until now we talked about how you should invest the surplus money that you get back into your business and that is what you are supposed to do. My clients think I am an idiot for recommending them to increase their costs, but that’s what I’m known for with my clients. You should do that too and the cost analysis will show you where to start. Think of the most important thing to a restaurant and the effect it has on customer satisfaction. Obviously, the cooks are the most important part of your restaurant and if they aren’t good cooks, you’ll get bad or decent food which will send your business falling into the crowd.
The reason I chose the comparison of restaurant is because it’s an industry that looks so simple from the top, but is very complex on the inside. And in businesses like these, its very important to allocate your re-investments in a proportionate manner. One of my clients, who owns a medium sized restaurant in downtown Chicago, took the tips I gave him during our 1 hour strategy session and implemented them into his business. His condition improved and he started to at least break even compared to the losses he was getting but he still was expecting a greater impact on his revenue. He calls me later that month and this is the conversation that we had: “Archal, that 1 hour strategy session with you the other day helped a lot and we broke even this month which thankfully stopped my debt from increasing. But I’m not getting the results I was expecting, you guaranteed that I would start to make profits, and as of now, it doesn’t look like I’ll be getting profitable any time soon. Rent costs are so high here and they may increase again since our lease is coming towards its end.” By now, you’re probably thinking “what? A business consultant is talking about one of his unsatisfied clients?” Hold on, you’ll see why. His situation is a common mistake that a lot of business owners make. Note that previously I said that it is very important to allocate your re-investments in a proportionate manner. He took all of the money that he got from external financing and spent it on things like ambience and lighting in the restaurant so his customers would feel more welcome in his restaurant. I already recommended him during our strategy session, that he should replace his head cook, because 90% of his negative reviews were saying that food was bad or decent. I told him: “Bottomline is, no matter how welcome your customers feel, if your food is shit, no one is going to come eat there. Sure they had a good first impression, but they won’t come back if it doesn’t taste good.” The best thing for you to do, regardless of your industry, is to find out where the powerhouse of your business is. By powerhouse, who/what makes the most money for you and who/what your business relies on the most and continuously keep on upgrading that. Think of your business as a cell. Your customers are the membrane of the cell, what keeps it from bursting open. You are the nucleus of the business. Or if you are simply a manager in a larger firm, you’re part of the nucleus. The powerhouse of the cell, which is called the Mitochondria, is what keeps the business running. Now how does this relate to increasing how many customers you have? It all comes down to customer satisfaction, which is just one of the ways you can increase your business. What I just talked to you about, was how to increase your business without going out and finding new leads, because having your existing leads find newer leads for you in the long term is what will make you grow next month and next year. Those newly satisfied customers will talk to someone
else about their positive experience which will create a chain reaction that will give you a sales burst, forever. Even if you are the VP of sales for a large company, that means you already will have tons of clients who may or may not be satisfied. Maybe it's now time to allocate your spending to customer satisfaction and take a smaller bonus?