Recovering Lost Accounts —Morgan
“WE LOVE you; please come back!”
Even the best print solution providers lose coveted clients from time to time. Sometimes, the customer walks away because of a misunderstanding. Sometimes, there’s a personality conflict between the print buyer and the sales representative. Sometimes, the client just wants to try someone new.
Sometimes, a customer walks away because the printer really screwed up, and the print buyer has lost faith in the company. There’s no doubt about it. Companies purchasing print—and the print buyers that represent them—do not tolerate mistakes as they did in the past. Gone is the gentleman’s agreement of “three strikes and you’re out.”
Today, one mistake might be all it takes. And while from the printer’s perspective that may seem harsh, it’s also understandable from the buyer’s perspective. Some print communications have greater return on investment (ROI) and risk than others. There is greater pressure to get to market faster. And mistakes, particularly with personal data, can potentially cause great financial harm to the buying organization.
Printing Errors Decline
The good news is that errors in the manufacturing of printed materials have decreased. While production errors and omissions do still happen, they happen less often due to advances in technology and more streamlined workflows. Likewise, print buyers are universally expecting better print quality. The reason why is because they are getting it. Quality has improved significantly over the past several years—and keeps getting better. Today’s print providers must maintain a certain level of quality to even be in the game.
Perhaps the reason why most buyers leave a long-term supplier today is the lack of perceived value. Ultimately, account loss is due to a provider’s failure to deliver unique benefits. If a buyer believes that it can get the same quality, price and turnaround from another supplier (if there is minimum risk in leaving) then it may just be a matter of time before the customer leaves.
Interestingly, suppliers believe that they are far more differentiated from their competitors than what their customers perceive. The differentiation is a judgment on value. This means that a supplier can truly be different from other suppliers, but if the customer doesn’t find those specific features or benefits meaningful to their business, then it doesn’t play into supplier selection.
Print buyers don’t always announce when they are leaving. Sometimes they just quietly walk away. In a Print Buyers Online.com poll of 84 top print buyers, 50 percent of respondents indicated that they end relationships with suppliers indirectly.
To get rid of a particular printer, they said, “I usually just avoid them and stop sending them bids to quote on.” In a similar poll, 59 percent of print buyers said that they “often” or “sometimes” tell a printer that it lost the job due to price—it’s the easy answer, as opposed to the real reason why the printer wasn’t awarded the job.
Armed with that knowledge, finding out why the customer defected is critical and holds the key on how to potentially get the client back. The process of successfully recovering lost accounts can seem like both an art and a science. The science requires systematic followup and precision in tracking down the past “story.” The art calls for nuances in understanding each customer’s unique perceptions and needs.
What Went Wrong?
The first step is finding out what went wrong. This seems to be a simple step, but if you ask both the printer and the client why the customer left, you are likely to get two different stories. Actually, it’s likely the buyer left because the printer didn’t understand the customer’s perspective (story)—and then didn’t make things right in the eyes of the buyer.
If you wait too long to try to win back the customer, sometimes even the customer doesn’t remember why they left. Perhaps a new print buyer has taken over and was told never to use a particular supplier. “There were big problems,” but no one on the current team knows why.
Don’t ask the sales representative to be the discoverer. Tension between a sales representative and a print buyer remains a common reason for dismissal of a supplier. Conversely, sometimes the closer the relationship between a sales rep and a print buyer, the harder it is for the buyer to criticize that person or the company in general.
If at all possible, it’s best to have an independent, third party approach lost accounts. Print buyers are more likely to be candid with an independent person. If your company can’t afford to hire an independent consultant, then at least have a neutral person—someone who hasn’t been active in servicing the account—make the inquiry.
Lost and Found?
If you have several lost accounts that you are attempting to recover, it may be helpful to put together a formal telephone or online survey. However, it’s best to not offer a financial incentive or gift for survey participation when you are seeking honest feedback. If customers are motivated to participate by the gift, they may not be fully honest about their experiences.
Recovering lost accounts is not as easy as just hearing the customer’s story and then asking for the business back. You need to present a plan. There’s nothing more frustrating to a print buyer than being told, in essence, “We have no idea why that problem happened, but you can be sure it will never happen again.”
If your company was responsible for mistakes in the past, it’s important that you detail in writing both the past problem and all of the steps your establishment intends to take to safeguard them in the future. The more detail you can provide, the greater your ability to win back the account.
Few companies have a process for recovering lost accounts. Fewer bother to measure customer defection. However, recovering lost accounts can have a significant impact on sales and profitability—not to mention a positive impact on your brand. PI
—Suzanne Morgan
About the Author
Suzanne Morgan is president of the annual Print Oasis Print Buyers Conference (www.printoasis.com) and Print Buyers Online.com, a free e-community for print buyers and suppliers (www.printbuyersonline.com). PBO, which has 11,000 members who buy $13 billion a year in printing, conducts research on buying trends and teaches organizations how to work more effectively with print suppliers. Morgan can be reached at smorgan@printbuyersonline.com.
