“Track customer expiry as a data point against every customer profile.” – Anthony Coundouris in today’s Tip 723
Do you track customer expiry?
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4Qs Framework
run_frictionless Website
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run_frictionless: How to free a founder from a sales
Anthony Coundouris on LinkedIn
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Transcript
Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Today’s tip comes from Anthony Coundouris. Anthony has a decade of experience consulting to technology and software-as-a-service startups. He specializes in designing automated sales and marketing systems and is the author of the book run_frictionless. Here he is:
Anthony Coundouris: Thanks, Scott, for having me on the show. In today’s daily sales tip, I’d like to teach you why it is beneficial to track customer expiry.
If you guessed I’m an Australian, you guessed right. Fun fact about us Australians. We love humor. In 2006, a man from Brisbane, Australia, attempted to sell New Zealand at a starting price of one cent. The price rose to three grand before eBay closed the auction.
Here’s the definition of customer expiry.
Customer expiry is the length of time a customer consciously or unconsciously allocates to making a buying decision. Every customer’s buying decision has an expiry. If the buying decision is not closed in the time frame, the customer is likely to drop off and abandon their buying decision.
Here’s why you want to start tracking customer expiry.
If your customer expires in 14 days, and you design a sales process that creates a customer in 21 days, bad news. You are out of the race.
I’d like to share a story with you about a CEO from a software company who approached us in 2015. Of the group of prospects who did not buy from him, he asked us to identify competitors they bought from. Here’s what we discovered.
Of the 100 prospects who didn’t buy from the business in the last 6 months, 50% never bought from any vendor.
We checked their profiles and confirmed they were legitimate buyers. We also conducted telephone interviews to find out why they stuck with the status quo. They told us ‘all the vendors sucked’. Apparently, all the vendors made the buying process so difficult and they would rather continue using spreadsheets.
These buyers told us they allocated between 14 to 18 days to make this buying decision. What we and the CEO realized was, we were not in competition with competitors. We were competing with customer expiry.
From that day forward we encourage all our customers to track customer expiry as a data point against every single customer profile.
Now in summing up
If you did what we did, and decided to track customer expiry, you made a good call. Here’s why.
Firstly, your market share grew even though your competitors have a superior product. That is because organizations with inferior products can win based on response time. Customers think it is better because you served them faster.
Secondly, you made the experience frictionless because every interaction you have with a customer has an objective. When you design a sales process around customer expiry, there is no room for bloat. This behavior drove up your net promoter score.
Lastly, your organization made more money. Your sales organization handled a greater volume of customers because they didn’t waste time on interactions that yielded no value.
Scott Ingram: For links to connect with Anthony on your favorite social platform, his YouTube channel, and of course his book: run_frictionless. Just click over to DailySales.Tips/723 and we’ll have everything for you there.
Once you’ve done that. Be sure to come back tomorrow for another great sales tip. Thanks for listening!