If you’re a freelancer or small business owner, you understand the importance of repeat business to the growth and survival of your company.

But do you know the monetary value of repeat customers? In his book, The Loyalty Effect: The Hidden Force Behind Growth, Profits and Lasting Value, Frederick F. Reichheld gives two compelling stats that you need to be aware of:

• Converting just 5% more of your customers to repeat customers will generate an average of 25% – 100% more in your profit per customer numbers.
• The cost of acquiring new clients is about 500% more expensive than the cost of servicing existing clients.

So what’s the number one thing you can do to generate more return business? Provide consistent and valuable communication.

Why Your Clients Need (And Want) You To Communicate With Them

If you ask most small business owners or freelancers why they don’t communicate more frequently with their previous customers they usually respond with, “I don’t want to be a nuisance.”

But consistent, valuable communication is actually desired by most of your clients. Hoping that a previous client will call when ready is not a game plan.

They Just Don’t Think of You That Often

You’re awesome at what you do. You may be the best vendor they’ve ever worked with.

But guess what, they don’t think of you very often (if ever). Why?

They’re busy. They have other things fighting for their attention and you’re currently not one of them. The less you insert yourself into their path, the fewer of them will actually call you back.

And when they do need the service or product you provide, many of them will select from one of your competitors who are reaching out to them and asking for a shot to impress.

Previous Clients Often Don’t Know of Other Ways to Engage You

When a client hires you for a project, it’s easy to assume that they know about all of the services you provide along with how those services can benefit them. Your services are listed on your website so your clients should be aware of them. Right?

“If they need it, they’ll ask about it,” is a common phrase among those without a lot of repeat business.

No they won’t. The reason your clients haven’t purchased one of your other services is that they don’t think they need it.

When you wait for them to reach out to you, you’re hoping that they’ll do your sales work for you by diagnosing their own need, selling themselves on the idea, then contacting you just to close the sale they’ve made in their minds.

Don’t count on that happening very often.

Clients Want to Feel Like They Weren’t Just a One-Time “Transaction”
If I hire you to do something for me and, when the project is over, I never hear from you again, I assume that you don’t much care if you hear from me again. So you probably won’t.

We continue to do business with people we like, trust, and have a relationship with. But that’s a two-way street. Meaning you need to communicate with me!

If you don’t, I’ll shop around the next time I need someone – even if you’re good. After all, I may find someone who really values me and wants a long-term relationship.

Your Competitors Are Probably Talking To Your Clients

I’ve alluded to it before, but this is huge. I’ve worked with a number of different companies that would get a list of the competitors’ clients and reach out to them with better services and offers. They got a ton of business this way.

People want to be impressed. Contacting me and letting me know how you can impress me in a non-pushy, non-sleazy way will impress me. I may just give you my business over another company or person I’m using if they’re not making the same effort.

When competitors reach out to your clients and help them understand how their services can help, your clients will immediately have it in their minds that you’re somehow inferior (even if you’re not). Once that happens, it’ll be nearly impossible to salvage the client.

How to Fix the Lack of Communication

You must take the time to develop a consistent and valuable follow up strategy that occasionally includes a personal touch. There are many ways to do this, but here are a handful:

1. Email Newsletters
Email newsletters can be a great, inexpensive way to keep yourself or your business near the front of your clients’ minds. A monthly reminder to them that you’re there along with new services or highlights of stalwart services can go a long way toward driving repeat business.

2. Personal Emails
One rarely used tactic that can set you apart with your personal emails is to send someone an article or blog post about their industry or a topic they’re interested in. Just a quick note that says, “Hey Jane, I came across this article and wanted to share it with you. I know how much you love waterskiing and thought you might find it interesting.” Do that on occasion and your previous clients will think long and hard about switching to someone else.

3. Handwritten Notes
My email inbox generally frightens me. I get way too many and I don’t like checking it. But I’m like a little kid when it comes to checking the snail mail box. What’s even better is when I receive a handwritten thank you note or letter from someone. So infrequent is this type of communication anymore that it screams for my attention and appreciation.

A few months back, I took to Twitter to complain about a horrible experience I had with Sonic. I received personal phone calls and a hand-written note from the store manager along with a few gift cards. Needless to say, I’ve continued to give them my business. Had they not done that, I would have never gone back.

4. Phone Calls
The smaller your company – the better this will work for you. If I order a widget from a large company then, a few weeks later, I drop into the queue of a call center employee, I tend to not care too much. If, instead, I hire a website designer for a project I’m working on and they call me a few days/weeks/months later to check in on me, I’ll appreciate it. [Note: If you're a sales person for a large company that sold me and you call me back, I'll be immensely impressed. Treat your large business like a small business - it will go a long way.]

Be Creative

There are plenty of other ways to do this. Which method(s) you choose will depend on your type of business and what information you have about your clients. The most important lesson is to be consistent. Find ways to cut through the noise without being obnoxious.

If you want more information on how to setup some automation for some of this, check out one of my previous articles: 4 Free Tools for Business Relationship Development.

Share Your Thoughts

Do you have a follow up strategy for your business? How do you keep in contact with previous clients?

We live in a relationship economy. So much of business is built on relationships. I want to like the people I work with because I’m giving them both my money and my time. I want to trust them. I want to know them – or at least know about them. And they want the same.

We leverage our relationships with others. If we do this in a healthy way, both parties benefit and neither side feels used. We often participate without even knowing. We ask our friends for a good dentist, a good hair stylist, a good doctor, a good babysitter. That’s healthy leveraging of relationships.

Selling me a drink that will cure all my ails without me asking about it, that’s abusing our relationship. (I’m talking to you Facebook people.)

Whether you accept it or not, we’re all in the business of relationships. Unfortunately, most people don’t act like it. To them, a relationship is a one-way street driven by one question: “What can this person do for me?”

One of the most powerful ways of building relationships is through acknowledgement. People want to feel important. They want to feel like they’re making a difference in the world and in the lives of people. They want to be known. Consequently, almost everyone you meet will have some sort of presence online. Whether through a blog or Twitter or LinkedIn or community forums, people are engaging in things that matter to them.

I use a few tools that allow me to enter into the lives of people I have a business relationship with and connect with them outside of the conference room. But I do it in a way that is non-invasive and doesn’t threaten to undo all that I’m creating. Below, I’m going to share with you the four tools I use for cultivating my professional relationships:

Google Alerts

One of the very first things I do when I begin a new relationship with someone is setup two separate Google Alerts for both their name and their company. People have lives outside of their work and I want to know when they’re being recognized for it. That’s why I use two different alerts. I want to know that John Smith was mentioned in his local paper for helping a non-profit complete a renovation on a house used to support women in crisis. However, I also want to know if John’s company wins an award in their industry.

Either way, I want to acknowledge John for the achievements. Not in a self-serving way, but in a way that would make me feel good about the email if it were sent to me.

“Hey John, I just wanted to let you know I stumbled across an article mentioning the renovation work you were a part of on the house for women in crisis. That was a very special thing you did for those women and I just wanted to share the link to the article in case you hadn’t seen it. [Link to the article for him] Cheers, Travis”

I don’t ask for anything because I’m not looking for anything. I’m looking to give John something: recognition. That’s it.

Google Alerts will scour blogs, social networks, newspapers, etc. It won’t catch everything and sometimes what it does return isn’t always timely. Most people who use it do so in a narcissistic fashion and have only an alert setup on their name. Those who take the time to do it for others will discover a whole new world of possibility.

Twitter

The next thing I do is check to see if the John or his company are on Twitter since that’s where I hang out online. You could do the same on Facebook but that tends to border on creepy if you’re not careful.

If one or the other is on Twitter, I follow them and add them to a private Twitter list called VIPs. This is a column for people I have a relationship with in some capacity. I can monitor their tweets and see what they’re up to. Not in a weird way, but in a helpful way. Did they just break some good news about a new project? I’ll shoot them a congrats tweet. Did they ask a question they need help with? I’ll re-tweet it for them.

I’ve had both existing clients and potential clients reach out to me to thank me for helping them as well as to ask for appointments to talk about work as a result. While that wasn’t ever my primary intention, it was nice to see.

Social Mention

SocialMention.com is a similar service to Google Alerts. The jury is still out on whether it’s useful to me or not but I thought I would mention it here. You have to be VERY specific about what you’re looking for with more advanced boolean and operator-filled searches which could turn some people off.

Also, it’s not the most user-friendly system since you have to approve each alert separately. While some results it provides are the same as Google Alerts, it does return some different data which is why I still use it. It will find things that Google won’t give me.

If you’ve figured out a better use for SocialMention, please tell me in the comments section below.

Google Reader (Or Any Other RSS Reader)

If the person I’m building a relationship with has a blog, I ALWAYS add it to my blog reader under a special section (much like my VIPs list in Twitter). I generally check my reader every day or so for new posts from those people. Then, if I can add something of value to the conversation, I’ll comment on their blog.

Let me say that again: if I can add something of value. If I can’t, I don’t comment.

People blog because they love to do it. Nothing means more to them (or me) than comments on the blog that continue the conversation, add new insights or challenge what was said. This is a huge gift of acknowledgement and recognition.

What?! Why Not LinkedIn?

I’m bound to upset some of you with my thoughts on LinkedIn. I think LinkedIn is a good networking tool but not a great relationship tool. It’s too much like the office and not enough like the local pub. People put their business face forward. They’re on guard for spammers. Everything is viewed through the lens of “What is this person trying to sell me?”

It’s not that LinkedIn doesn’t have a place. It’s just that I’ve never found it good for creating relationships with people that my competitors couldn’t create in just the same way.
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These are the tools I use for developing my business relationships online. Always remember to be courteous and don’t SPAM people. Find genuine ways to help them, encourage them and relate with them. There’s always a time and place for offering up your services.

However, see if you can find ways of NOT doing that. You’ll be surprised how much further you’ll get with people. When in doubt, “Do unto others…” I’m always asking myself, “Is this making me the type of person that John Smith would want to grab a beer with while visiting Nashville? Or will this make him not want to tell me he’s in town?”

Question: What tool(s) have you found for creating better business relationships? Please share them with me and others in the comments below.

First, I’d like to apologize to Chris Brogan for stealing his blog title. It was purely intentional.

His post today was about using Twitter’s “Follow Friday” to drive traffic to your blog as well as it’s typical use which is introducing people who follow you to others they should follow. You can read his post here if you’re interested.

Here’s what he wrote in a nutshell:

It solves two problems: It gives you more than 140 to talk about the people you recommend, and it also cleans up Twitter so that we don’t watch a stream of @someoneawesome names rushing by all day.

So here’s my list for today of people who you ought to be following on Twitter. I’ve limited today’s list to some of the people who were at the OnNashville meetup last night.

@davedelaney – Dave is a social media strategist and the man behind Griffin Technology’s social media strategy. He’s also responsible for brining PodCamp and BarCamp to Nashville along with @MarcusWhitney who you should also follow.

@kateo – Kate runs an optimization and analytics agency here in Nashville called [meta]marketer. Super cool. Super geeky.

@ericshuff – Eric is the social media guru at The Tennessean newspaper and runs their blog OnNashville. He’s also responsible for coordinating the killer meetup last night.

@knightstivender – Not only does she have a cool name (Knight), it turns out she’s from the same ‘hood in Nashville that @lelenash and I live in. Granted, she’s on the East side and we’re on the West side, but rival geek gangs can come together for the greater good.

@nathantbaker – Nate is a creative. And a storyteller. And a techy over at Sitemason. If there’s a meetup or event in Nashville, you’ll probably see him. He gets around.

@tnmetro – Michael is a writer at The Tennessean who covers the Metro government for the paper. He’s a great source of info for issues affecting our great city.

@lelenash – Last, but certainly not least, my beautiful wife, Lisa. She’s not a geek. Doesn’t like meetups. But she was gracious enough to let me drag her to it before our dinner plans. She’s super cool and you should follow her. Love you, baby!

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That’s the list for today. If you were there and I didn’t include you (which there are a lot of you who were), just let me know and I’ll gladly update this list. Create your own post. Link to it. Cheers!

Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been working to hire a Brand Ambassador for Ethos3. With a few exceptions, I’ve been shocked at some of the applications I’ve received. One person even wrote a “cover letter” that consisted of the following sentence: “I have a lot of sales experience even though my resume doesn’t show it.”

We live in a time with roughly 17% unemployment. People need work but complain that they “can’t find a job.” I’d offer up this instead: Those who understand that they are business developers for themselves can find work in almost any market.

Business developers create and nurture a network.
Business developers search out ways to use their skills and assets to help others.
Business developers look for creative ways to get new business.
Business developers know they have to clearly define how they can help.
Business developers paint a picture of how wonderful the partnership can be.
Business developers are intentional in every contact they make.
Business developers try to stand out from the crowd.

Start thinking of yourself as a soloprenuer – a one person company – that needs new business. You’re the business developer for You, Inc. Now, get out there and be intentional. Hustle. Want it.