By Patrick Avenell

Accountancy firm RSM Bird Cameron has today shared five tips with retailers to help improve their businesses and, surprisingly, one of them isn’t to hire RSM Bird.

Andrew Graham, the national head of business solutions at RSM, said retailers should classify customers so they know which are the most important; ask customers to return so they don’t feel unloved; provide “awesome” service (which is a strangely emotional adjective for an accountant to use); nurture your customers with systemic follow-ups; and make effective use of customer feedback.

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“Business owners will be in a much better position if they focus on the things they can control and manage those things well,” Graham said. “It will mean that additional consumer spending due to external factors, such as interest rate cuts, will be a bonus and not the lifeblood of the business.”

“It can cost up to six times more to win a new customer than it does to have an existing customer purchase again. This is because you invested time and money to acquire that customer for the first sale, but every additional sale after that involves very little cost, which means that for every sale you make to a previous customer, you actually keep more as profit.”