low-hang·ing fruit: n. inf. a thing or person that can be won, obtained, or persuaded with little effort: "we know mining our own customer base is low-hanging fruit."

re·ten·tion: n. the continued possession, use, or control of something.

The Low-Hanging Fruit? The customers you already have!

These are the customers who have purchased vehicles, service and parts from you in the past.

Think of the obstacles they've overcome to do that:

• Tens of thousands of dollars that your competitors have poured into ads in your marketplace.
• Friends and family with advice who always know the best place to purchase a vehicle or get service.
• The chance that they would encounter an untrained or uninterested employee.
• A manufacturer that produces some models that are considerably less attractive than others.
• A location where your customers have to drive past fourteen of your competitors.
• And many more...

After overcoming all of these obstacles they chose YOUR store!

This is a tremendous compliment.

Now the hard part! Keeping them as customers. Retention!

You are willing to spend tens of thousands of dollars to conquer new business but your existing customer base is largely forgotten. You advertise to attract customers so that you can have an ongoing profitable relationship with them... and then do nothing to nurture that relationship.

The truth is, retention is not sexy.

True retention activities are less than 5% of most dealerships marketing budgets, yet a repeat customer is happier, provides more gross per transaction and refers everyone they know to you. The first step in a superstar retention process is a commitment to building lifelong relationships. Your data needs to be accurate and your customer contact process needs to be dialed in.

Low-Hanging Fruit, LLC provides cutting edge customer contact solutions that deliver unmatched cost per contact. From Call Broadcasting phone messages to Email and Text Message campaigns to Virtual Call Centers. We provide web based solutions to track your true customer retention and using state of the art VOIP can measure all your efforts with our media meter.

Keep advertising and get your fair share of conquests.

But if you want to grow, keep the customers you already have.