Why your most loyal clients could be your biggest growth opportunity.

CRE Success Principle: Many loyal customers receive less attention than unknown prospects. You can avoid this mistake by giving your existing clients the same energy, care, and strategic effort that you show to a potential new client.

Too many businesses focus on chasing new leads – and forget the goldmine of opportunity sitting right in front of them.

Research shows it’s up to seven times easier to win work from a past client than a new one. So why aren’t we doing more to keep the clients who already trust us?

In episode 226 of Commercial Real Estate Leadership, I explore why loyalty deserves more attention – and why neglecting it could be costing you.

From mobile plans to bank loans, I share examples of how existing customers often get worse deals than new ones.

But in commercial real estate, that approach can cost you trust, future work and valuable referrals.

You’ll hear lessons from brands that have earned my blind loyalty, and a challenge to ask yourself: are you doing enough to earn the same?

I also provide a checklist of simple but meaningful actions – from expressing appreciation to prioritising long-term relationships – that can help you retain your best clients and grow revenue without always chasing new leads.

This episode is a timely reminder: retention is just as important as acquisition. If you want your clients to choose you again and again, you need to give them reasons to stay. 

Episode transcript:

 In business, we often spend a lot of time chasing new opportunities from prospects that have never been a client before.

But how much time do we actually spend on shoring up the business of our best and most loyal clients?

Now research shows it's seven times easier to win business from an existing client than it is to win business from a new client.

So that means spending more time to ensure that your past clients choose to continue working with you again and again needs to be an important part of your revenue growth strategy.

So, in this episode, I want to talk about the importance of rewarding loyal customers in a world where loyalty isn't always appreciated.

This is episode 226 of Commercial Real Estate Leadership. I'm your host, Darren Krakowiak. Thanks for joining us for today's episode. I'm here to help you lead better, grow faster and stress less. If you're a commercial real estate principal, you are in the right place.

And at the top of the episode, I recognised that loyalty is not always something that's rewarded, and you might think, well, I'm pretty good at rewarding my most loyal customers, and I feel like that I do get loyalty points and I get some recognition from the companies that I do business with regularly.

But there are sometimes cases where loyalty is actually a penalty.

Have you noticed how when you go to terminate a monthly recurring subscription, like for example, Audible. If you go to try and terminate that contract, you will generally get offered a discount to stay.

So, you might say, I guess that is rewarding loyalty because they are rewarding you to be more loyal. But why not actually just reward people who are continuing to be good, loyal customers?

Another way that loyalty isn't always rewarded is that there are often better deals that are offered to new customers than existing customers get.

And a couple of examples that I can think of, which are relevant here, include phone companies: so, with your mobile phone contract, I think you'll find that new customers generally get better deals than existing customers do.

And I think banks as well is another case where if you change banks, you can often get a better interest rate, for example, than if you were just to continue doing business with your existing bank.

And a little side note, I recently started doing business with a new bank, being a customer of the Commonwealth Bank since I was a kid.

And just the level of change that was required for me to go through in terms of navigating this new bank's online banking software and app, and desktop, I found it really hard.

I think NetBank is an excellent system for online banking, whereas this new bank's system is really not that great.

And it actually made me a little bit regret not having stayed loyal to the Commonwealth Bank, even though I'm still with the Commonwealth Bank, I've now got a couple of loans with this other bank.

So, I think the opportunity for us as business owners is to actually say, well, what can we do, first of all to ensure that clients continue to stay loyal.

And then, if a client was to decide to leave, how can we make the contrast between a new service provider and what we were offering so stark that they would regret having made that change?

So have a think about brands that you are blindly loyal to. Why are you blindly loyal to them? What is it about those brands that makes you continue coming back?

And a couple for me are Virgin, as in Virgin Airlines, Virgin Australia. And since about 2021, I've been pretty much blindly loyal to them. Like I won't even go to any other website to check on airfares when flying domestically. It's only with them.

And they haven't let me down. I've actually found that their on-time performance has been good. I've been impressed by some of their values that they put on display through social media in terms of the things that they say are important to them as a business.

And, my loyalty, I don't think has been taken for granted in terms of when I've dealt with them on a customer service matter.

They have resolved it in a way that is not necessarily like allowing me to take advantage of them, but they've resolved it in a way which shows them that what I've asked them to resolve is important to them to make sure that I am satisfied with the resolution that they have put in place, and they've done it in a timely matter with good communication.

Another one that I'm blindly loyal to is Hilton. So, I've been very loyal to Hilton for about 10 years I think I've been, you know, pretty good status with Hilton.

And just recently the opportunity came to get a status match with IHG Group, which has Intercon and other brands. And we've stayed at a couple of Intercons and they're pretty nice. And I think they're probably nicer than a base Hilton, although, of course Hilton has different levels of hotels.

But I continue to come back to Hilton because they take care of it. In fact, we are going to Japan for Sakura season in 2026, which is the cherry blossom season.

And I decided to book it early and also book the hotels early because I think they're only going to get more expensive given how everyone seems to have gone to Japan over the Sakura season over the past couple of years to be getting on board and going next year.

I may as well book early and I just book with Hilton because I'm blindly loyal to them. I want to rack up the prerequisite number of points to get the status to continue, and they've just done a good job of taking care of me.

So, to make this relevant for you as a commercial real estate principal, I've just made a list of things that you might want to ask yourself to make sure that you are not taking for granted your most loyal clients.

One thing to ask yourself is when was the last time that you pursued the business of a long-term client with as much intention and, I guess, enthusiasm as if they were a new prospect, new business, someone that you've never worked with before?

Do your long-term clients feel seen, valued, or do they perhaps feel sidelined and ignored?

Now, even if you are not deliberately sidelining them, or you might feel like you're not ignoring them, if they believe that if that's their perception, that can become their reality.

So, if clients don't feel like they're the priority anymore, they might start to look elsewhere, even if your core service or quality of delivery hasn't changed.

And I think that this will be exacerbated when they're being actively pursued by one of your competitors, which I think we should always assume that our competitors are going after our clients.

And I think it's a pretty reasonable assumption to make, especially for your best clients, because if they're attractive for you, they're probably attractive to your competitors as well.

So, I want to give you some ways that you can reward the loyalty of your best long-term clients.

The first way is to make sure that we are always pursuing their business and we're not taking it for granted.

So, there are four reasons why any client might want to work with us. There's the relationship, there's our track record, or our, if you like, position as a market leader or as someone who is a good and reasonable alternative to the market leader.

There's our ability to respond to the brief, so how much we actually put in terms of effort into our proposal, into understanding the property and understanding the client's needs. And then there's the fee.

And I think with existing clients, we sometimes believe that the relationship is going to do all of the heavy lifting for us, whereas I think we need to make sure that we are continuing to be competitive and putting ourself as the obvious choice in all those other areas of consideration, even if we are clearly the one with the best relationship.

Make sure that we're checking in regularly with our best clients and not just to ask what else they need from us or to pitch for business, but perhaps just to thank them for being a long-term loyal client or to see if there's something that we can deliver in terms of value to them from a place of service.

In our last episode, we talked about those changes in taxation laws, so any of your clients who have property inside their self-managed super funds. There's an opportunity to be of service and add some value.

I talked before about the attractiveness from my perspective of NetBank versus this new bank that I'm with, which it feels like their online portal has been created by an accountant, not by someone who's just a regular person like me.

So, make sure you've got client first design, make a client's experience seamless in terms of portals, in terms of reporting that you're sending them, in terms of communication that you are having with them.

And make sure you are prioritising your existing client's needs. This can include giving them early access to deals and other valuable information that you're distributing to the market. It might be prioritising responses from them.

So rather than saying, “Ah, we know this client's good, we'll get back to them tomorrow.” Maybe actually prioritising them and putting them at the front of the queue because they've earned that right to be there because of their loyalty.

I think those small gestures can show your appreciation. And more broadly, I think client appreciation events, not just for lead generation, but to generally connect with your existing clients and even provide introductions to your existing clients, to other people who perhaps might have some value to exchange with each other, can be a real way that you can add more value to the relationship.

So that is our episode today. It's really about making sure that we're doing all that we can to shore up the loyalty of our already loyal clients.

So, have a think about why are you loyal to some of the brands that you are loyal to now? Are you maybe a little bit taking for granted some of your most loyal clients? And start thinking about specific ways that you can ensure that your loyal clients don't feel like they're being taken for granted.

That is our episode for today. Thank you so much for listening, and I will speak to you soon.