During today’s difficult economic climate, customer retention has become an even more important determinant of success. Customer retention is all about loyalty. When customers aren’t loyal, they leave. As customer loyalty increases, they are much less likely to leave, and more likely to give you additional business, even in the face of serious price competition. Knowing how to move customers up the satisfaction scale to loyal is the key to not losing them and to growing revenues from your existing customer base.

At the January 29^th Sales & Marketing Roundtable, Roger Urban, President of Urban Wallace Associates, will be presenting data from several client engagements to explain how and why improvements in customer satisfaction lead to greater customer retention and increased revenues. Then, he will discuss three specific strategies for improving customer satisfaction and loyalty.

As a participant you will learn how to:

• Meet customer expectations in each market segment that you serve·
• Take very specific actions that will improve the single most important driver of customer retention
• Improve your customer’s post-sale experience in order to increase his or her loyalty

Roger Urban is ideally suited to be our expert speaker for this Roundtable. He is a specialist in marketing, new product development and strategic planning who has founded and run his own very successful boutique marketing research firm, Urban Wallace Associates (www.uwa.com), for 25 years. Urban Wallace is focused on generating new, actionable information about customers’ and prospects’ Purchase Logic™ and satisfaction levels. The primary deliverable is a report and interactive session focusing on specific actions to grow the revenues and margins of its clients. The company’s clients range in size from technology start-ups to mid-size and very large firms, such as FedEx Freight and Citibank. Industries of focus include technology, industrial manufacturing, consumer products and services, transportation and financial institutions.

Roger began his marketing career in the Maxwell House division of General Foods. He was the Brand Manager-New Product Development for The Clorox Company where he and his team invented and launched Soft Scrub®. Roger is a graduate of Dartmouth College and earned an MBA in finance and marketing from Stanford University.

This is the first session of the Council’s Sales & Marketing Roundtable for the 2009. Please come prepared to raise issues, ask questions and contribute your insights and experience as Roger Urban and Roundtable facilitator & Council trustee Mike Kinkead conduct a lively, interactive session about customer retention.