Challenges  – We faced them all!!

With lots of new faces in the room, it was great to see the honesty and transparency about the challenges everyone is facing when it comes to client retention and new business growth.

We started with the numbers, do we actually know them? Net profit, client retention, client growth and new clients. What does your business need to grow? It was apparent that short term need was greater that long term planning, so, we prioritised and tackled the short term strategies we can implement that can and will impact this quarter.

The solutions included, getting out of our own way to make the call, ask for the business and not assume we are being a pest, to delegating admin tasks to free up time to re-engage with trusted and loyal clients and ask them for referrals. The beauty of this is that although it can impact this quarter, if embraced well, it can become a long term strategy.

And to finish we scratched the surface of how we build deeper relationships, which resulted in a number of the new faces in the room committing to follow up 121’s that will ensure they start that journey.

Howard Feather of Oxford Brookes commented.” Friendly and welcoming event where I came away with a stronger understanding of my own business goals and actions to complete them as well as connecting with some fantastic local businesses.”

B4’s CEO, Richard Rosser, added. “Thanks once again to Caroline for another first class session which opened our collective eyes to the common challenges we are all facing and how we can overcome them. It’s always good to know you’re not battling away alone and that there is help out there and reasons why some things don’t work like you think they should!”

One takeaway was the alarming drop-in customer retention rates that is becoming the norm in business. One way to counter this is to always say ‘thank you’ to existing customers to make them feel special. One lucky recipient of such a gift was Nick Breakspear of Royal Cars for their recent commitment to B4 for the next two years. Sadly Nick was unable to join us to collect his gift, a personalised Aston Villa shirt, his favourite team….well we hope it is!

Next up we welcome Matt Skipper, Head of Business Development at Mills & Reeve as our special guest on 5^th December. B4 Members can register here: www.b4-business.com/event/breakfast-bdm-ecosystem-roundtable-with-caroline-oconnor-of-fourth-born/