This Podcast Is Episode Number 462, And It's About How To Win Your Clients Back And The Secrets To Getting The Best Projects   Construction company owners - predominantly service-based businesses with monthly or yearly client subscriptions, likely deal with some level of customer churn, especially given the COVID-19 pandemic. Even customers who love your business and services may have lapsed for various reasons.    Whatever their reasons for leaving, it's still a great idea to win them back. Why? This is mainly because winning back a lost client still has a higher success rate than converting a prospect into a customer. After all, they've already hired your service once, so you don't have to convince them of the need. And you don't need to build brand awareness; they already know you exist.    Even if you can't win everyone back, those you can bring back to your business will affect your bottom line–and will do so at less expensive overall.   Here are some strategies to win back clients who have left: 1. Ask why they left You can learn a lot from customers simply by asking the right questions. The information you get may enable you to make some adjustments or start a conversation to win them back. For example, you may learn that your service is missing a vital feature that your competitors offer. Based on that, you may want to adjust your product or service.  Consider sending a survey to your customers to find out not only why they left, but why they chose you in the first place, and what you could do to win them back. These surveys can be sent when someone cancels their membership or goes a long time without hiring your company.  Ask questions like: Why did you decide to become our customer? What did you like most about our product/service? What circumstances caused you to leave our company? If you switched to a competitor, what made you choose them?  What could we do to earn back your business? 2. Identify people who are more likely to come back to you You won't win over every lapsed customer, but some are more likely to return to you. Those include people who left because of pricing rather than service issues, those who went without voicing any complaints, and those who referred you to others. Additionally, the clients who purchased the most from you were also likely delighted with you at some point and probably easier to sell to again.  This step is more straightforward if you have customer relationship management (CRM) software and follow your clients through their lifecycle.  3. Offer the right solutions Determine what you're willing to do to win them back and develop solutions that could address their reasons for leaving. For example, if you're ready to lower your price slightly or offer a special discount for returning customers, you can show that to lapsed clients. Consider that solution if you don't want to drop the price but can offer a premium service at no additional cost.  If customers say your service didn't have enough features, let them know you're upgrading your packages and invite their feedback on the changes you make. This allows them to know you heard their concerns and gets them invested in the final offer.  4. Know your churn rate Your churn rate is the percentage of people who stop using your service in a period. You determine the time (say, a week, a month, a quarter, or a year). Take the number of customers you lost in a time and divide by the number of customers you had at the start of that same period. Then, multiply that number by 100 to get the percentage.  If you have 500 customers at the start of the month and lose 10, you have a churn rate of 2%.  A lower churn rate indicates you have happy customers who love your brand and service. The Secret To Winning Bids And Getting The Best Projects  Not everyone seems to realize that in construction, money is not made in the field by working and pushing boundaries...