February is often equated with its most romantic holiday, Valentine’s Day, and in particular, with showering your loved ones with tokens of your affection.  Along this vein, we started wondering how often we, as small businesses (and really anyone else who works closely with their clients) make it a point to reciprocate the love we get from amazing clients.  When clients come back to us time and again, they are letting us know they appreciate what we do.  This Valentine’s Day, we want to talk about how to return that kindness.

The first question you would want to ask yourself, would be, “how can I tell who really likes us?”  Of course off the top of your head, you probably can name quite a few people who you do regular business with or those who sing your praises.  But if you can set up ACT! to tell you who is interacting with you and when, then you can get a clear picture of who your best clients are.

And what a best client is to you will vary.  Do you want to thank clients who buy a lot in dollar amount?  Or is it the clients who are consistent return customers?  Or do you have clients who always make contact with you around the holidays?  All of these things can be tracked in ACT!.

Once you decide what your criteria is, you can set up ACT! to stratify your clients.  Having a field called “prospect level” or “client level,” gives you a place to track what kind of client you have.  You can then choose a method of tracking them.  You could go with a hierarchical classification, like assigning clients “A” through “D” status, or you can use descriptors, like “frequent customer,” or “loyal promoter.”  Once you have these labels on your contacts, it is easy to run a search for everyone who is an “A” level client, or anyone who is a “frequent customer.”

From there, it is up to you how you thank your customers.  Whether you want to provide them with free, valuable white papers, or send them hand-written thank you notes, making the effort is a guaranteed way to make sure you are letting the clients who like you know that the feeling is mutual.

In order to keep your stratification records current, we recommend updating them monthly.  If you would like to set up a report with complex stratification criteria, we can help!  Contact us for information on custom reports at 847-520-0860, or info@kristismith.com!