This article was first published in the July 2020 issue of AP. The digital version of the magazine is available here.

As we recover from the COVID-19 lockdown and prepare to make the most of the rest of 2020, it’s more important than ever to maximise the ROI on your investment in marketing and sales.

Most businesses focus a lot of time and money on getting new customers to grow their revenue and profit. But sadly, the same businesses often fail to realise the full profit potential of the new customers’ lifetime value.

Why? Because of the expectation to reality ratio (E:R) is out of whack.

What does that mean? Marketing and sales set the expectations your future customers have of your business – what you can do for them, what they’ll get out of it, and how things work.

Then, as soon as they sign on the dotted line and become a customer, they’re hit straight between the eyes with the reality of dealing with your business.

What happens in most businesses is that without meaning to, the marketing and sales process sets expectations that are not in alignment with the reality that the customer will experience as soon as they sign up to work with you.

This causes so many issues for your business, like wasting time on emails and calls with unhappy customers, wasting money re-doing work, stressing your team out, customers moving to another supplier, customers not trusting you to do any other work for them not giving referrals to mention a few.

So how do you fix this problem? This is not about being perfect or having ‘the best’ product or service in the market. This is about setting and communicating clear and realistic expectations and then delivering on them.

Customers need to trust you and fully understand what you can offer them so that when you get a customer they become a customer for life and you maximise the CLTV, which means a great ROI on the acquisition cost.

There are eight stages you need to focus on aligning in the first 100 days to get this result:

1. Assessment: The time leading up to the decision to buy or not. The opportunity to set expectations to align with the experience they will have if they decide to become a customer.
2. Activation: The day the customer signs on the dotted line and you get paid. The customer feels a sense of hope and possibility for the results you can deliver. Don’t let them down.
3. Affirmation: Begins in the minutes and hours after the purchase and can last for weeks. This is where ‘buyers’ remorse’ kicks in and they wonder if they made the right choice. Do something that reinforces they have chosen well, they can trust you, you’ll deliver.
4. Admission: The customer gets the product/service they purchased in their first order. This first impression (physical and emotional) sets the tone for future interactions while at the same time welcoming the customer.
5. Acclimation: During this time, the customer will be “learning the ropes” interacting with your team members. Do things in a way that makes your customer feel that this is an experience they enjoy and they want to keep having.
6. Assimilation: The customer should be experiencing benefits that your product/service has delivered to them (usually around the 30 to 60-day mark).
7. Adoption: The customer is used to working with you and is seeing consistent benefits. This is where you’re starting to become ‘irreplaceable’ and can cement a ‘customer for life’ type of relationship.
8. Advocacy: Work with customers to identify prospective clients as well as strengthen the bonds with existing customers via case studies and testimonials. Leveraging all the hard work you’ve done to serve your customer.

Review your touch points across this journey in each stage of the first 100 days and create at least one for each. To make it effective, mix up the way you communicate throughout the process, keep it fresh, exciting and appeal to different senses. Use a combination of these channels: phone call or Zoom meeting; in person meeting; e-mail; video; gifts; or direct mail (postcard or letter).

Start simple and keep refining your customer on-boarding process – just remember to keep your E:R as close to 1:1 as possible.

Meqa Smith is the strategist of The Unforgettable Agency.

For more information contact Meqa Smith at m@unforgettable.agency. 

Comment below to have your say on this story.

If you have a news story or tip-off, get in touch at editorial@sprinter.com.au.  

Sign up to the Sprinter newsletter