Four Stairs of Customer Loyalty — Tony Alessandra

Four Stairs of Customer Loyalty

Dr. Tony Alessandra is one of the foremost experts on sales, marketing, and relationship building. He is a prolific writer and is a Hall of Fame Speaker and a member of theiLearningGlobal faculty. He is also the originator of the internationally-recognized behavioral style assessment tool – The Platinum Rule®. Visit Tony’s website to learn more about him and his offerings by clicking here.

Dr. Alessandra has written and spoken frequently about the importance of building relationships and customer loyalty. In one of his presentations, which you can watch here or at the end of this article, you can learn about his model of the 4 Stairs of Customer Loyalty. As he says, “Anyone can sell anything once. But then try to sell it a second or third time.” Tony’s work can help you get to that second, third and beyond sale.

The 4 Stairs of Customer Loyalty

1. Prospect (Marketing Skills)

2. Sale (Selling Skills)

3. Customer (Service Skills)

4. Apostle (Relationship Skills)

On the first step you need to find Qualified, Quality and Profitable prospects. You can you can a sale until you have someone who might be interested in your product. In order to find this first group of people, you capitalize on your marketing skills and sort through who are the people who are likely to buy and who are not.

On the second step you close the sale. This is an entirely different skills. Here is where you discuss the product, pricing and the value of the product to the client and help them move from being interested to agreeing to purchase your products. Tony has another great lesson he learned early in his career about the difference between selling someone and closing the sale. When you “sell” someone they feel pressured or coerced into the purchase are unlikely to support you, recommend you or buy again.

Customer Service, the third step, is where you deliver your product or service. Here is where the customer really gets to experience the value (or lack of it) from your product. If you want to be successful, this is the step where you want to over deliver and exceed customer’s expectations.

Lastly, the step where everyone wants to get is to turn your customers into Apostles, where they go out and spread the word of what a great product or service you have. You have provided such great value to them, they want others they know to experience that same value and refer business to know. My writing about Tony’s work here is an example.

Are you following the four steps? Which step are you and where do you need to develop next?

Watch Tony’s presentation on the Four Stairs of Customer Loyalty here or below.