When it comes to getting a business off the ground, the first thing most people think of is how they will acquire customers. However, it may be more important for a business to learn how to keep their hard-earned clients, rather than focusing on securing new leads. Of course, in order to work on customer success, you must first secure leads, but I’d like to focus on the importance of client retention once the Sales team has them hooked on your product. My name is Chloe Finn, and I am a rising junior in the School of Arts & Sciences, majoring in Economics and minoring in Psychological & Brain Sciences. This summer, I’ve taken a deep dive into the startup world and the St. Louis entrepreneurial ecosystem through interning with a local startup, Boat Planet.

Boat Planet is a platform that connects boaters to boat service providers. Much like Home Advisors and Angie’s List for boaters, Boat Planet provides client leads for boat service providers through its platform. Across the United States, boaters are now able to find reputable service providers when previously there was limited access. But what happens when the market is oversaturated with business?

Before starting at Boat Planet, I had limited knowledge of boating and the boating world. Now, I can tell you that since the pandemic, people are buying boats, lake houses, and docks at a very high rate, meaning more are in need of services like building, buying, selling, and repairing. For Boat Planet, this means that the boat service providers, our clients, aren’t in need of lead generating. Therefore, securing these limited business opportunities is crucial. However, when you’re working in account management at a startup, customer success and retention are the most important.

When the Sales department works so hard to get clients on the Boat Planet platform, it is so important to make sure that work isn’t put to waste by keeping the clients happy as soon as they get on the platform. This mostly means giving new clients a little extra attention, which can make it difficult to give the same amount of attention to loyal, already happy clients. What I’ve learned is that retaining clients is much like the saying about friends…

“Make new friends, but keep the old; Those are silver, these are gold.”

To me, this relates to client success and retention in the startup world, because while the best strategy may appear to be emphasizing Sales, the work that it takes to get the client on-boarded and set up on the platform will not be worth it if the business is unable to keep the existing clients happy.

Ultimately, loyal customers who believe in your business mission are the ones that you need to keep happy, as they are the backbone of a startup’s client base. So yes, look for new business, but always remember the people and customers who got you there in the first place.