In the 80’s, I worked at a retail furniture store. If you wanted to be a successful furniture store in the 80’s, you ran double truck ads in the newspaper every week. You were on the radio with a nauseating jingle every hour of the day. Drive traffic to the store. Have salespeople ready to pounce when the customer walks through the door, except one guy. Murray never took walk-ins on Saturday because he had booked himself solid all day with customers that had been referred to him by happy customers the week before. Interestingly, Murray was always the top salesman because he had built himself a business within the business of his employer. Also, if you think about it, if his employer stopped advertising, all of the other salespeople would have no one to talk to and essentially be out of business, but Murray could keep getting his referrals and keep making sales.

Murray had a system. He called his customers. If you bought a living room set from Murray, you were gonna get a call from him each of the first three months that you had the set and every year for the rest of your life (or in this case, Murray’s life. He died a few years ago. Good guy!) His customers believed that he cared. They would have followed him wherever he went. He didn’t need advertising. He had his evangelists.

This is the second in a three part series. If you haven't read, Net Sales - Why Do My Customers Go Away?, you may want to do it now and come back. As you may have noticed, I tried to write that first article from management's perspective. This article will be from the customer's perspective.

Last month, I wrote How to Maximize Client Retention, Evangelism and Sales to share how I as a solopreneur did it. I've had several conversations about client retention since the article published. Typically asking, "What's causing my clients to go away rather than staying for life, or at least until we finish?"

This story comes from my daughter-in-law, Melissa, who is the co-owner of the Inbound Design Studio, the most reliable source for an effective website to sit on the Hubspot CMS. (But I might be biased along with her 100's of customers.)

An elderly Floridian called 911 on her cell phone to report that her car has been broken into. She is hysterical as she explains her situation to the dispatcher: 'They've stolen the stereo, the steering wheel, the brake pedal and even the accelerator!' she cried.. The dispatcher said, 'Stay calm... An officer is on the way.' A few minutes later, the officer radios in 'Disregard.' He says. 'She got in the back-seat by mistake.'

You've probably heard it before. I started my business in 1986. I had no money and not a lot of brains. I'd been in the industry for less than a year, but I did know how to make cold calls. So, I started. 30 cold calls every morning before noon. Spend the rest of the day following up on the promises that I made and received on the calls. I made thousands of cold calls in the first year of my business, but I didn't make any in year 2. I learned how to ask for and get referrals.

I just saw a survey about on line civility.

I was talking with a 'former' client today and she told me that another 'former' client had asked her if I was OK. She asked what he meant and he replied, "He seems a bit grouchy." She said, "Come on! That's Rick!"

This is a very special article written by Greg Brown. Greg is Senior Enterprise Account Executive at HubSpot and according to every manager that he's worked with, it's almost embarrassing how badly he's always blown away his quotas. In his own words...

How many clients do you have?