Well thought out programs designed to keep your customers can help you grow your business. Two key ingredients for small business success are encouraging customer loyalty and promoting purchase behavior. One way to accomplish these is by creating a loyalty program — a tailored marketing plan that rewards customers for their participation.

These programs can range from simple punch cards (i.e. buy six muffins, get a seventh free) to store-branded credit cards that reward redeemable points.

There are distinct advantages to having a formal loyalty strategy in place, including having a means to maximize opportunities and to grow your business in a more strategic way.

The most exciting thing is that you can build the program at your own pace, on your own budget and to your liking. Once your program is firing on all cylinders, you’ll develop a deeper and more meaningful relationship with your loyal customers which, in turn, should provide you with insights that will allow you to strategically outshine your competition.

Below are four practical tips for starting your own loyalty program:

1. Build a solid loyalty-strategy plan: This is where your creativity comes in. All components of the program should be clearly considered and vetted, such as timing, branding, value-proposition, attractive incentives and rewards, loyalty currency (points, cash-back, discounts, coupons, etc.), and marketing channels.  You don’t have to reinvent the wheel, look to companies that have a solid loyalty program in place for inspiration and ideas. For instance, the Neiman Marcus loyalty program makes excellent use of attractive incentives, while Subway offers a good example of a program based on loyalty currency. Prepare a calendar of events and timetable to successfully complete the plan. Talk to your vendors and suppliers about providing assistance to showcase their products or services in exchange for supporting your program.
2. Embrace a loyalty mindset company-wide: There needs to be a philosophical change in the way your company views loyalty for your employees, vendors and customers. Starting at the highest level, it’s crucial that each department within your small business fully understand, support and embrace the loyalty strategy that you’re going to unveil. Once your plan is in place, provide training at all levels within your business. The training program should be an ongoing and mandatory employee obligation. This will offer the highest possible success rate to impact your company’s bottom line.
3. Set up your systems: Depending on the sophistication of your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system, you’ll need to ensure that the proper systems are in place to effectively run your loyalty program. There are many tasks to consider, including the process of enrolling, identifying and tracking your loyalty customers. In addition, you’ll want to consider having flexible software in place in order to efficiently set up promotions, run reports and add or delete program options at your preference. Start by talking to your software provider, point-of-sale provider, your IT staff and vendors for software recommendations. Note that the cost of getting started can vary drastically by industry, so be sure to do your homework.
4. Market and launch your loyalty program: After putting the pieces together, it’s time to promote and launch your program. Depending on the size of your small business and its geographic footprint, you may want to consider a soft launch or pilot launch prior to releasing the program to your entire customer base. This will allow you to work through any potential snafus. Either way, be sure to allocate plenty of time to drum up interest prior to going live. This can be achieved through in-store promotion, online promotion, receipt messaging, e-mail, text and social media. One option you may want to consider is assigning a team to focus on specific action items to boost membership, such as a special sign-up day that promises incentives for instant enrollment (a free product or service paid by a sponsor or manufacturer).

Once the program has launched, your customers will be curious about how the program works. It is your job to display and explain the program rules in a simple and concise message. Put your best offering forward as your customers will want to know exactly what the program offers them and why they should enroll.

Adapted from Entrepreneur.com posted on December 10, 2010. Read more.

Rewind ten years and recall that sales tools such as Sales Force Automation were just seeing the light of day.  Today, there’s a plethora of new sales-oriented technologies promising to help teams sell faster, better, and smarter.

But how do you know which sales innovations and best practices are the most effective and can give you the best results and how do you evaluate their potential impact on your sales cycle? Join this FREE live webinar to hear the experts present the 7 biggest sales innovations of the past decade and learn how to unlock their value for your sales team! Join this webinar and find out:

• Top 7 sales innovations from the last decade: unlock their maximum value for sales
• How to use social media effectively to improve prospecting, gain insights, and close deals faster
• How to further leverage timeless sales techniques using new technologies
• How innovative technologies and solutions can help you build greater customer loyalty and service
• And much more…

Date and time—March 25, 2010 at 1:00 – 2:00 EST

Register Now!

Industry Expert and Sage Representative:

Chris Selland—Industry Expert

Independent Contributing Analyst, Focus

Chris’ Profile

Bio:

Chris Selland is an Independent Contributing Analyst for Focus. Mr. Selland is an experienced technology ‘insider’, having spent many years as an Industry Analyst as well as a Business Development and Marketing executive. He has deep domain expertise in the areas of enterprise software, service & CRM strategies as well as technology industry economics, alliance strategies, and corporate development/M&A. Mr. Selland founded Reservoir Partners L.P., a CRM/enterprise software advisory & consulting firm in 2001, which merged in 2004 with Aberdeen Group (acquired by Harte-Hanks) where he served as Vice President of Sell-Side Research. Mr. Selland also served as an M&A/market advisor for Covington Associates, an Investment Bank specializing in Mergers & Acquisitions in the enterprise software and services industries. He also served as Vice President of e-Business Strategies at the Yankee Group, a technology research and consulting firm which was acquired by Reuters. In addition to his role as a Focus Expert, he blogs frequently on technology trends and companies for StockTwits and SiliconANGLE. Mr. Selland is past President of the Customer Relationship Management Association (CRMA). In addition, he has been frequently quoted in major business and industry publications, and is a past member of the CRM Magazine Editorial Advisory Board. He is an accomplished public speaker and presenter, having chaired and spoken at numerous leading industry conferences.

Bill Hoffman—Sage Representative

Bio:
Bill Hoffman is the CRM Evangelist for mid-market ERP products at Sage. A veteran in Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Bill has spent the last 18 years focusing on business process management. He is responsible for the strategic development, deployment, and management of SageCRM partner training and sales.

In his prior role as director of hosted services and partner development, Bill was responsible for establishing the operational infrastructure of the hosted product line to increase partner sales success. More recently, Bill turned to time management, productivity enhancement, and social networking as they relate to CRM/ERP technology in his quest to help businesses and people fulfill their goals.

He has extensive experience in team building and leadership, customer service, sales, marketing, product management, and most recently the sales of end-to-end business applications. During his 12 years with Sage, Bill has rounded out his experience by serving as director of customer support, product management, and partner development, as well as roles in marketing, technical support, and sales.

Register Here.

Customer relationship management or CRM is a corporate level strategy which focuses on creating and maintaining lasting relationships with its customers. Although there are several commercial CRM software packages on the market which support a CRM strategy, it is not a technology itself. Rather, philosophy and process which places emphasis on the customer.

A successful CRM strategy cannot be implemented by simply installing and integrating a software package and will not happen over night. Changes must occur at all levels including policies and processes.

To be effective, the CRM process needs to be integrated end-to-end across marketing, sales, and customer service. A good CRM software application program needs to:

• Identify customer success factors
• Create a customer-based culture
• Adopt customer-based measures
• Develop an end-to-end process to serve customers
• Recommend what questions to ask to help a customer solve a problem
• Recommend what to tell a customer with a complaint about a purchase
• Track all aspects of selling to customers and prospects.
• Track all aspects of customer support.
• Serve as a data repository to facilitate analysis for better decision making.

When setting up a CRM strategy and process, a company it might first want to identify what aspects of CRM are relevant to its business then look for a software application that over the required functionality.

By David Beck, CPA.CITP

http://www.linkedin.com/in/davidbeckcpa