One of my top ten favorite business books is “Customers for Life” by Dallas car dealer Carl Sewell.  He’s one of the business owners I respect because he understand Retail DNA.  I will refer to this book from time to time to discuss lessons for all of us in retail.  For today’s post I will just share two ideas from Sewell.

The first comes directly from the title of the book.  The subtitle is “How to Turn That One-Time Buyer Into a Lifetime Customer.”  Sewell calculates what a typical customer spends with his dealership over their lifetime.  Without digging up my copy of his book, the number is approximately $330,000.  The specific number is perhaps not important as the book was originally published in 1990 and the numbers are going to be different for your business.  The point here is, when Sewell is dealing with a customer complaint, he judges what they are prepared to do. not by how much they just spent but how much they will spend over their entire lifetime as his customer.

The second concept is very simple but has a profound impact on what the dealership will do for a customer.  Sewell says, whatever you would do for your best friend, you should do for your customer because in retail your customer is you best friend.  For example, he says if your best friend would phone you in the middle of the night because they broke their key off in the door lock, then his customers can call him.  Well, not him directly, his dealership has its own service truck on the road 24 hours a day.

Do you love your customers enough to go to these lengths?  What one thing can you implement in the next 30 days to start turning one-time buyers into lifetime customers?