How to Keep Clients Coming Back

Have you ever poured your heart into your work, only to realize you may be giving too much? Join me as I recount the lessons learned from walking the tightrope between adding exceptional value and inadvertently stifling clients' growth. In the candid world of client retention, it's not just about satisfaction—it's about sparking delight and driving personal initiative. I'll share the insights I've gained from my own coaching experiences, the kind that keeps clients not just coming back for more but also turning into vocal advocates of your services.

This is a treasure trove of strategic gems for anyone in a client-focused industry. I'll be offering actionable advice on how to involve your clients in their journey with you and why sending surprise gifts can be a game-changer. Plus, I'll underscore the significance of setting boundaries and pre-planning those delightful surprises, ensuring that every move you make fosters a sustainable and rewarding business relationship.

In this episode, you'll learn the following:
1. The significance of client retention in business.
2. The delicate balance between providing value-added services to clients and overgiving.
3. The importance of strategic planning in maximizing client retention

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 2:07

Are you a woman who runs the world but know you need a little support to Listen up? Through coaching clients and pursuing my own health and ambitions, I've found getting to a goal takes more than just willpower. It takes a mindset restart and learning how to adjust and not quit. In this podcast, you'll hear from women out there leading the way in momentum, and I'll be sharing impactful mindset strategies to help you get out of your own way. Whether you're on a health journey, starting your life after a big change or trying to keep up momentum towards your passion project, with all the ups and downs, this is for you. It's time to decrease the things that hold you back and increase the things that move you forward towards a life that you want. I'm Amber Bebelheimer and this is the Momentum Restart Podcast.

Speaker 2: 3:00

This is episode 104 of the Momentum Restart Podcast. I'm your host, coach Amber Be. Let's talk about client retention keeping your clients long-term, keeping your clients coming back. Whether you have monthly revenue from a client or if you sell products, you want them to keep coming back to you and we've heard this before. I'm going to say it again that keeping your current clients is easier than finding new clients. Plus, you want to do a good job, right? This is important to you and me as well. I know I want client retention yes, because that helps business, but also I don't want clients to come to me and then leave not happy with what they experienced. I want to do a good job. I'm here to help make a difference in client lives and I know that if I have client retention, that shows that I am making a real difference, that they are having a transformation, that they are sharing with other people and that they want to continue doing the work to grow and be productive in a way that honors their personal life so they can enjoy their life. That makes me so happy. I want to do a good job, and I know you do too. I know you want to serve your clients well.

Speaker 2: 4:30

Now I want to talk today about a mistake that cost me client retention, and I hope to share this mistake with you so that you don't do it, so that you don't have to make the same mistake that I did, and that was doing everything for the client instead of giving her space to have to do the work. It came from probably a good place. I'm going to dig into that a little bit more. If you are a coach or a service provider, you can probably relate to this, even if you're in sales. I've seen this in sales, too, where I think, as women, overall, we just want to give. We want to give so big, we're so used to giving, we love to give, and so if we're doing everything for our client instead of teaching, giving enough, giving the product and then stepping back to allow, to give her the space to allow her to do the work, to have to level up, she's not going to see that real transformation. So I want to dig into that a little bit, because in today's industries coaching industry especially, I really think in a lot of these industries service provider, anything, online sales, brick and mortar, service provider in person we have to no-transcript overgive in some ways, but in the right way. Let me explain. It is 100% necessary, 120% necessary in today's industries to provide so much value, more value than the client expected. We want to create the experience for the client in a way where we surprise them and we delight them and they are just giddy with excitement because they love it so much.

Speaker 2: 6:40

My sister recently moved to a different salon and one thing that they do at this salon, which is so simple but a brilliant value add, is they have these beautiful menus at each salon chair of seasonal lattes and they teach the stylist how to make these beautiful lattes in the back and so when you come in it's part of the experience She'll ask. She asked me which one of these lattes do you want? They have a snack cart. That's not just a rate. It's not like a snack cart. It's like this beautiful gold bowl filled with these delicious snacks. And the glasses are these really unique glasses with etching on them and these really fun paper straws with designs on them. And my boys love it too, getting their haircut with her because they get these fun snacks and this gold bowl. And I think it's so fun because they get these beautiful lattes and they're seasonal, so it feels like it's in the moment.

Speaker 2: 7:52

What an amazing value add. Right, like it's a surprise. It's not something that I expected, but it keeps me coming back. So, yes, it's absolutely necessary today to provide more than what your clients expected. If we're doing the bare minimum, they're gonna move on pretty quickly. And if you're doing the bare minimum, I want to encourage you to dig into why. Why are you doing the bare minimum? Is it because you don't have time and we need to readjust your schedule? Do we need to readjust your packages or your pricing so that it can allow space for your clients to be surprised? Let's dig into why. And if you wanted to talk about value adds, ooh, I love this plan too, because I love surprising my clients.

Speaker 2: 8:48

I worked a couple of years ago with Boku. Who is this amazing? I had Kristen Fisher, the owner, on the podcast a year ago and talked about how her business the Boku box. If you've ever done private coaching with me, you've received a Boku box in the mail and it is a beautiful surprise. It's something that clients don't know is coming. It's not on the package list when they sign up for coaching with me. It's just this really fun thing. They just get in the mail and it is so beautiful how Kristen puts these together. Every it's filled with five different. Well, I don't want to give it away. If you are going to be starting coaching, I shouldn't tell you everything. There is something special coming for you. But there are these five little gifts, beautifully wrapped individually in momentum restart colors, in this velvet ribbon, with a momentum restart branding box and a workbook that I put together just over giving in that way, value adds, surprising. That was something I planned into the program, but something that clients didn't know about ahead of time, so that it surprised them. That's a really great value add.

Speaker 2: 10:10

Now, however, however, over giving, overgiving is a common mistake that, for coaches, that actually reduces client retention, and let me talk about how to know which one is which. Overgiving or overmanaging your clients could look like too much communication, too many different ways. Are you sending your clients emails, texts, personal messages, instagram all the different things all the time in different ways? Are you giving them too much and overwhelming them? Overgiving can be, for me, a common mistake that I made that cost me client retention was when I was doing 90 day plans. In the very beginning, I was doing everything for the client and I was putting everything together for them and I could easily see it myself, and so I would plan it for them, give it to them and go, and I realized incorporating them more into the planning helps them take ownership of it and incorporating them into the checkups, the checkups, the check ins having now with my 90 day planning, I make sure that we have three 20 minute calls leading up afterwards that they are responsible to watch the momentum restart masterclass that I send them to learn the skills of restarting, learn the skills of adding polls to their schedule and learn the skills of adjusting and not quitting. Because if I just do the make their plan for them, then and they're not actually changing from the inside to make sure it's going to happen, they're not going to experience that transformation. So, to experience the transformation, I'm over giving in a new way that allows them space to level up, to do the work, to learn how to adjust and not quit and put their plan into action. So it's a value add by adding in momentum restart masterclasses and check in calls. However, it's over giving in a way that is intentional and it's pre planned surprises.

Speaker 2: 12:51

Another way that this could that over giving in a negative way is that you're doing these as a knee jerk reaction. So if there's certain things are doing for clients giving discounts, meeting with them at all hours of the day, anytime that they want to, going above and beyond the scope of work that you committed to Usually these things are done in a knee jerk reaction or from a scarcity mindset, like there's a fear that pops up of, oh my gosh, she's going to leave me. I need to give all these things and I want to encourage you to look at that relationship as if you were looking at a friend in a relationship with a friendship or a partner, and if they were responding to that partner in a knee jerk way of like, oh no, he or she is asking for asking, saying I'm not doing enough, or asking for these extra things I have to do everything. I have to bend over backwards because I don't want them to leave. You wouldn't encourage them to do that, so let's not do that for our clients. We're not going to change your communication protocol and boundaries because a client needs something outside of that scope.

Speaker 2: 14:20

If you clearly set those boundaries in the beginning, you show up and you give your absolute best. You have pre-planned surprises that are going to delight them. You're giving your over giving in a beautiful way, but be careful for those moments where we start to feel like, oh, I don't want her to leave, so I'm going to add on x, y, z. Those are usually done from a scarcity point and they usually are not effective. So a value add is intentional, it's pre-planned, like those surprises that I mentioned. Or it's also a value add is in response to a client need that you might see over and over again. So it's not a knee-jerk reaction to one client. It's something that you see over and over again and this is something I saw over and over again with 90-day clients of me doing everything for them in the beginning, a couple years ago when I started this, and realizing, oh, they need to have check-ins and they need to do the mindset work to help them follow through. So we're going to add on pre-planned surprises, adding on the things that are going to help them follow through.

Speaker 2: 15:43

These details of how you deliver your services and your products are a big part of what we can strategize with together in my quarterly strategy sessions, because your 90-day plan should give you relief and that means, like I talked about last week, free from putting out fires your planning for the next 90 days, whether you're working through the planner in journal or we have a planning call in the books. Either way, your plan should give you relief and that means you're not so busy putting out fires. You're free from that. So you actually have time to make strategic moves like what we talked about today, like pinpointing what those value ads can be, having time to pre-plan them, really looking at the data and looking at what clients need, and having space to think. We need space to think as CEOs and really think through what our clients need and discover and ask them. We need that time to make strategic moves to increase our visibility and our sales and at the same time, it's going to serve your clients so well. It's going to serve them so well that they can't help but tell everyone they know all about you. So this has to be in part of your planning thinking through how you're serving your clients with additional value in a way that is pre-planned, that is intentional, that's in a response to client need that you've seen over and over again, and also watching yourself that you're not overgiving, overmanaging, overcommunicating and pushing them away. And, if you need help digging into this or pinpointing areas where you can level up your business in this area for that client retention. I would love to chat, reach out, we can talk about it and we can see what kind of strategy can help you increase that client retention this year.

Speaker 2: 18:08

Thank you for listening to this episode of Momentum Restart Podcast. I would love to hear what you think about it. What were your takeaways? What action steps do you now want to take? Dm me on Instagram at CoachAmberB and let's keep this conversation going. I promise I respond to every message I get. Talk with you soon.