Customer Events – How to Handle

We should all be collecting and entering into the computer all customers’ birthdays and anniversaries. “We” includes the Repair Dept. when they are taking in or delivering repairs, the Sales Assistance’s when they are helping at the counter, even the Treasury Dept. when they are helping to make calls. Whenever any of us come in contact with a customer, we should try to get their dates if we don’t already have them.

If we all were to do this, this would create a lot of possible future sales.

If we even just had half of our current customer’s dates, that would equate to at least 10,000 customers and 10,000 possible sales. Let’s say we only sold 10% of those guys a birthday or anniversary gift. That is 1,000 extra sales per year. Our average sale is $2,500. So 1,000 X $2,500 = $2,500,000. That’s 2.5 million in extra sales! Who wouldn’t want to help achieve that!

It’s easy to see that a little extra effort on everyone’s part helps to create a lot more sales.

Once the sales staff has these dates they can work these files and try to generate business. If you have some customers yourself and you aren’t in sales, you should collect dates too from your customers and generate business as well.

Customers should be called at least two weeks in advance of the birthday or anniversary. You should set it up the previous month with follow up reminders until they buy.

Sending a birthday or anniversary card to a customer is a very good PR move. It shows that we care, and keeps us on their minds.

You should also call them to wish them a happy birthday or happy anniversary aside from just trying to get the wife or husband to buy a gift for the other.

We record these important dates for a few reasons. Of course we would like to make a sale but more importantly, we are a company that believes “Life should be Celebrated, not just lived”! Our customers are important to us and we should do everything we can to help them celebrate these special moments whether they buy something or not. So let’s all get as many dates as possible and then let’s use them.

Just the other day a young lady was upset all day as her boyfriend forgot their one year anniversary. Had we followed this policy we would have alerted him well in advance, made him a hero and would of helped make this a special day for the young lady rather then a day of gloom. Face it, most guys don’t think of these dates. Women learn this in time and either understand or give up hope; so when guys do remember it is all that more special!

When we as individuals in this company help our customers celebrate these events we win too in terms of extra sales and extra money to get the inventory we want, to help expand the store, get a great X-mas bonus and be in a position to even better help our customers Celebrate!