What can be done to control customer acquisition costs?
One way to start controlling customer acquisition costs is to analyze the sources of your new business. How balanced in the mix? The following list is ranked from the most cost-effective customer-acquisition approach to the least. • Customer Retention. All companies today are discovering that the single most cost-effective source is repeat business from existing customers. What percentage of your business does this represent? What more might you be doing to encourage customer retention? See customers in their full economic context, not just solely in terms of need for your product or service. What issues keep them awake at night? What are their priorities? What bottlenecks and missed opportunities are they wrestling with? Understanding the points of pain in their internal value chain can enable you to create demand by anticipating customer needs even before they ask you to respond. • Referrals. What percentage of your business is coming from customer referrals? Do you have a system in
