This is the third in a 7-part Profitability series coinciding with the July 14 release of my new book, Profit In Plain Sight: The Proven Leadership Path to Unlock Profit Passion and Growth by New York publisher Morgan James, AND the accompanying 2015 Return on People Benchmark Report that will help you shatter your profitability speed limits, set the bar higher, and achieve your new goals.

**Part 3: Can You Earn Customer Loyalty In Less Time Per Week Than You’re Spending on Email Per Day?**

I hope you’re already getting a ton of new ideas to make your business more successful – we’re just scratching the surface of the 57 Profit Accelerators you’ll find in Profit in Plain Sight! Make sure to register to receive all your free bonuses on Launch Day, July 14.

Today, we’re going to explore the eternal challenge of keeping customers loyal for longer. Did you know that just a 5% increase in loyalty can improve your bottom line by 95%? So simple! And yet often overlooked. Let me give you the secret that I had to learn by getting a big flat spot on my forehead, beating my head against the wall… so that you don’t have to.

Ever lost a customer you thought you could count on? In my early days when I was in sales, I remember submitting some pretty fabulous sales forecasts… and sometimes coming up short when I got some kind of lame excuse that a competitor had a better price. That was a great wake-up call for me that I’d failed to create the kind of value that made ME the only choice. Sure, some of those were sealed bids, and the pricing argument can hold water there. But unless you drive the cheapest car in North America, you know that when a customer perceives value that they want and are determined to have, it trumps price every time.

For every highly profitable customer you lose, you need 10 new customers of average profitability to replace them. Yikes! Can you name them today? If not, then strengthening customer loyalty is critical to the health of your business, whether or not turnover is a big issue for you today or not.

I want to share a highly practical approach to winning loyalty that competitors can’t match, and speak to why that matters in your businesses – and all you have to do is spend about the same amount of time per week as you’re spending on email every day. It’s a simple 7-step strategy for what I call a Value Creation Conversation, and it’s NOT a sales call, NOT a ride-along, and NOT a meet and greet. Instead, it’s a way to get inside the emotional side of your customers’ decision-making process and determine how to add more value. In the one failed turnaround of my career after a long line of successes, it’s the one thing I neglected to do. Instead, I got mired in internal issues (sound familiar?) instead of getting out from behind my desk and letting my customers set my agenda for profit and growth. Besides, working with customers to create value is where all the FUN is in your business!

It’s simple, it’s powerful, and I’ve included a link in the book for some free extra video resources to show you how. You’re definitely going to want to pick up a copy of Profit In Plain Sight on launch day and add it to your summer reading list, because it might just mean you’ll have your most successful year ever! My next post will help you tackle the hidden costs of quality issues, but in the meantime pick up your free chapter, and pre-register for all the extra bonuses I’m adding in on launch day, July 14 2015!