The Client Comes Back
Don Mariano Marsala was the boss of Vicari, a small hill town not far from Palermo. In the late seventies and early eighties there was a war between the families in Sicily, and when it was over Don Mariano was deposed. They didn’t kill him straight away. That delay, as his son Vincenzo later told the court, caused confusion among his clients. People who were loyal to him, or who simply didn’t know power had changed hands, kept coming to him for protection, though he could no longer give it. Except on the quiet, behind the new boss’s back.
In one case, a truly sad one, Don Mariano paid for a client’s protection out of his own pocket, just so the man wouldn’t guess the old man no longer had any say.
It went on like that until early 1983. A man came back from abroad who had leased out his land before he left, and now the tenant refused to give it back. The man went, naturally, to Don Mariano. But the land lay in the territory of the neighbouring town of Caccamo, and to settle the matter with the people there, Don Mariano had to show he was still in business. Four days later he disappeared.
I don’t want to frighten you. I want you to see what the old man still had of value once everything had been taken from him. Not money, not men, not guns. He was left with clients who kept coming back to him. It was the last thing he had, and, as it turned out, valuable enough to be killed for.
The Cheapest Client
In the office people talk about this more calmly, but it comes to the same thing. The most expensive client is a new one. To get him to hear of you, trust you, try you and make up his mind, you spend money, time and nerves. A man who has already bought from you has been through all that. He knows you, knows what to expect and isn’t afraid. Winning him back costs a fraction of finding someone new.
And yet most businesses forget about their former clients. The client has gone, and good riddance: we’ll deal with the ones who haven’t come yet. That’s like throwing away the keys to a house you’ve already lived in and then trying to break down other people’s doors.
Every former client has a reason why he stopped buying. Sometimes he simply didn’t need it any more. Sometimes he went to someone cheaper. Sometimes you offended him and didn’t notice. And sometimes there’s no reason at all: he just forgot. There are more of those than you think, and they’re the easiest to bring back. All it takes is a reminder.
Back Again in Two Weeks
A builder in Palermo complained to Gambetta that there was no getting rid of the mafiosi: every two weeks they were knocking at the door, offering services, territorial monopolies, like pushy travelling salesmen. Gambetta calls this a malignant version of the foot-in-the-door technique. The mafioso doesn’t take no for a final answer. He comes back, offers new services, waives payment to keep the obligation alive, recalls old friendships, drops hints, proposes to become family.
Here you can see the line you must not cross. Going back to a former client is right. Going back every two weeks after a clear no means turning into the man people hide from. Once a season, with news he can use, is attentiveness. Every week with the same offer is a siege, and in the office nobody kills you for it, but nobody buys from you either.
Loyalty by the Crate
How does a client decide whether to come back at all? Look at that same Palermo fruit market. A farmer bringing in his harvest doesn’t trust it all to one commission agent. He gives, say, a hundred crates to one and a hundred to another. And next time, more crates go to whoever got the better price. The grower is paid after the sale, which means he’s lending the agent his goods on credit. If the agent cheated him, Gambetta was told, the farmer punches him on the nose and never works with him again. If the agent merely paid late, he gets dropped too, only without the fisticuffs: late payment means business is going badly for him.
Here is an honest rule about coming back. A client returns not out of loyalty but because last time it went well for him. Every time, you earn the next order by the way you filled the last one. A client’s loyalty is measured in crates: what he brings you this time is what you earned last time.
Who Gets Dropped
And here’s what happens when a client isn’t looked after.
The mafioso Giuseppe Di Cristina got into trouble over a restriction order, and the Christian Democrats, Italy’s main party, whom he had backed, did nothing to help him. So he turned to a deputy from the small Republican Party, Aristide Gunnella, who found him a job in a regional state agency. Antonino Calderone told his interrogators that at the next elections the Republicans got an avalanche of votes in those parts, the like of which they had never seen.
It’s a story about politics, but the lesson in it is commercial. A client who wasn’t helped in a hard moment leaves. And he doesn’t leave alone, but with everyone who listens to what he says. The country’s main party thought of those votes as its own. They went away over a single favour done at the right time by somebody else.
This Year’s Oil
Don Vincenzo kept a notebook in his desk drawer, and in it I wrote down every restaurant that had stopped buying from us: when, how much it used to take, why it left, if we managed to find out. Once a year, in November, when the new oil came in, he took the notebook out. And to every restaurant in it we delivered one tin of fresh oil and a one-line note: “This year’s oil is in.” No reproaches, no “why did you leave us”, no discounts.
About a third came back that same winter. Some were disappointed with the cheap supplier, some had changed cooks, some had simply forgotten how good it had been. Those who didn’t come back weren’t the losers either: they had a tin of oil to use for a year, and when the occasion arose they put in a good word for us.
Once I asked the Don why we took oil to people who had dropped us. He said nobody had dropped us. A man had just gone out for a stroll. And when he got tired of strolling, he ought to know where to come home to.
Remember three things. Write down who left and why. Go back to them with a gift or with news, not with a reproach, and no more often than is decent. And do every job so that the next one comes by itself. Then you’ll have what old Don Mariano had, only without his sad ending: clients who come back even when you don’t call them.