What if the biggest growth opportunity in your business has nothing to do with marketing?

The Growth Opportunity That Has Nothing to Do With Marketing

Chances are you’re spending more time and money trying to find new customers than you are taking care of the ones you already have.

When I worked at a bank, we did call nights a few times a year. You’d sit there with a list, calling strangers, trying to get them in the door. I could offer a new customer a better rate than someone who’d been with us for ten+ years. The people who stayed, who sent their friends, who never once looked around – the bank just assumed they’d keep showing up because they always had.

Most businesses have a strategy to get new customers and almost nothing in place for the ones they already have.

You see it everywhere. Cell phone providers, insurance companies, and pop-ups on websites are all geared toward getting new people in the door. The loyal customer gets the old rate and a hold queue.

Why Customer Retention for Small Business Gets Ignored

I get my glasses from a small local shop. The first visit was simple: I needed a pair, and finding frames that fit my small nose is harder than it sounds. The women there figured that out fast.

Now, when I tell them I’m coming in, they have three or four pairs ready for me to try. I almost always choose one. If they spot a photo or video of me on social and think my glasses need adjusting, they message me.

At this point, I’ve bought far more pairs than my insurance covers.

I send everyone I know to them, and I’ve never once looked up a competitor. This is the reason referrals are usually the best customers.

Will Guidara wrote a book called Unreasonable Hospitality (if you haven’t read it, you should) about turning Eleven Madison Park into one of the best restaurants in the world by actually paying attention to the people already there. He didn’t build a legend by finding new customers. He built it by making the ones he had feel like the only people in the room.

Jesse Cole could have taken the Savannah Bananas public, got sponsors, and chased the kind of growth that looks impressive in a boardroom. Instead, he decided the people already in the seats were worth obsessing over and built something that sells out every game with a waitlist in the thousands. His whole thing is stop doing what your customers hate. After every game, his team asks where the friction was because he believes that’s where all innovation starts. If you want to see what that looks like in practice, this video is worth ten minutes of your time.

What Happens Between the Sale and the Silence

Somewhere between someone paying you and never hearing from you again is where most businesses lose people.

And yeah, that sounds obvious. But when did you last follow up with someone who bought from you six months ago?

Unless you’re asking or putting yourself in their shoes, you’re missing the friction points that are quietly costing you customers. When you actually look at what happens after someone pays you, it’s usually something small.

• → A follow-up that never went out.
• → A question nobody thought to ask.

Fixing it doesn’t cost much but it changes everything about whether someone comes back.

Where to Start Fixing It

Think about the last time a business made you feel like they actually remembered you. Not an automated birthday email but a real moment where you thought, they actually care. That’s what gets you a referral from someone who loves you enough to send their people your way.

More followers won’t do that. A better campaign won’t either.

Finding new customers feels like growth. Taking care of the ones you have feels like admin. But that’s exactly backwards.

 

Now go remove some friction,