Building customer stickiness is a direct path to building company net worth
When the day arrives that you want to sell your business, the difference between being euphoric with the outcome and disappointed could lie in a single area – customer stickiness.
Customer stickiness is another way of saying customer loyalty. Having customer loyalty leads to your team’s ability to confidently project future growth. The ability to confidently project future profitable growth goes a long way in making your business attractive to potential acquirers.
Sit with your team and discuss steps you could take to build customer stickiness – discuss things like:
- What percentage of our customers purchase two or more products/services from us?
- If we created a bundle of our products or services, would that be more compelling for customers versus them buying our products or services individually?
- Could we offer our customers better pricing or better purchasing terms if in turn they are willing to sign an annual purchase agreement with us? A potentially lower margin could be offset by getting greater visibility to their purchasing requirements which might help our purchasing economies and/or help our production/fulfillment efficiencies. Note, these agreements are viewed positively by future acquirer’s as long as the agreements don’t lock you in to fixed pricing that may impede your future revenue or profit growth with that customer.
- Does our product or service provide us an opportunity to offer our customers a subscription type service and in turn, provide us high visibility to revenues?
- Could we develop (or acquire) a product or service that is truly unique from our competition – putting us in the position of gaining a sole source position with some or all of our customers?
Use time as a friend in building your customer stickiness. With each level of stickiness you build, you’re automatically building the overall worth of your company.
