A book review and recommendation by Dan Beaulieu
EVERGREEN: Cultivate the Enduring Customer Loyalty That Keeps Your Business Thriving
by Noah Fleming
Copyright: 2015 by Amacom
Price: Hard Cover: $26 • Kindle: $9.99
272 pages with index – BUY NOW
Customer retention for the 21st century
Maybe I like this book because I agree so wholeheartedly with the author. In fact, one of the selling points of my consulting company is that I can grow your business by 10 percent without ever adding a new customer.
In this new book, Noah Fleming shows us how to not only “mine our current customer list but to also reach back to those companies you used to do business with and re-capture some of that business as well.”
By using his defined “three C” program, you can pick up just about everything you need to know about customer loyalty and retention. The three Cs are:
- Character: which is based on why you do what you do;
- Community: creating a community of customers with shared interests and needs; and
- Content: what your company offers to your customers.
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The chapters on customer loyalty are especially valuable. The author explores and defines various loyalty programs, showing us which ones work and which do not by using real life examples from Starbucks to Delta Airlines.
The chapter on firing your customers is worth the price of the book. Knowing which customers to fire, why and how is invaluable. Basically this gets down to a few categories, from those customers who take up the most time and have the least profit margin to those unhappy customers who will just never be happy no matter what you do. The real life example of how Amazon deals with unhappy customers is telling, to say the least.
This one book handles everything you need to create enduring and lasting customer relationships with the right customers while culling out the wrong customers. This is not just a sales book … or a customer service book. It is a book about successfully running your business no matter what that business is. If you buy, read and study the ideas laid out in this book, you will be successful. That’s all there is to it.
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Dan Beaulieu is the president and founder of D.B. Management, LLC, a consulting firm specializing in all aspects of sales, marketing and branding with a focus on rep-principal relationships. His latest book is The PCB 101 Handbook which can be purchased online by emailing danbbeaulieu@aol.com. Dan is also the author of “It’s Only Common Sense,” a weekly sales column appearing at pcb007.com. Dan can be reached at 207-649-0879.