By Alexander Yanchuk, owner of a consulting company, management consultant in the field of organizational development, lean manufacturing and quality management;
By Natallia Karnialiuk, junior researcher
If you’ve ever tried to build a long-term relationship with a client, you already know: client retention is not about bonuses, loyalty programs, or polite managers with robotic voices. It’s about building a business that’s beneficial for the client to stay with — even if he’s a triple cynic, allergic to CRMs, and grew up in procurement. The classic approach no longer works because classic clients are extinct. The ones left are smart, picky, and annoyingly demanding. And yes, these are exactly the clients who make you rich.
The Approach
First, the good news: client retention is a manageable process. The bad news: if you’re not managing it, it’s managing you. That’s when your sales team stops selling, your client base leaks like a marketing budget, and your funnel resembles a funnel only in shape.
In consulting, we’ve long understood: retention is not “soft” marketing. It’s part of the strategic architecture of the business. The client must be integrated into your business process in such a way that the attempt to leave comes with pain. Not necessarily physical pain (though sometimes that works too), but certainly with tangible losses.
Forget phrases like “customer satisfaction” or “creating added value.” These concepts are outdated. The client doesn’t need to be satisfied — he needs to be hooked, embedded, locked into your product system so thoroughly that without you he feels naked in a conference room.
The Problem
A typical business mistake is to romanticize the client. As if doing everything perfectly will make him stay forever. Wrong. The client is not getting married. He’s comparing, searching, listening, and constantly monitoring your weaknesses. Loyalty is not love. It’s rational behavior based on benefit, fear of loss, and inertia.
Now, here’s what most often breaks retention:
- Product boredom. You don’t update your offering, and the client yawns at your commercial proposals.
- Excel-level personalization. “Ivan Petrovich, here’s your discount.” Ivan Petrovich isn’t an idiot. He knows you sent that exact email to 72 other Petroviches.
- Emotion-based service. That’s like building on sand. Emotions don’t scale. Systems do.
- Lack of strategy. If you don’t know how to retain a client, you’ll lose him — even if your product is objectively the best.
- Inability to filter toxic clients. Yes, retention is also about getting rid of those who destroy your margins.
The Solution
Now — how to do it right. Spoiler: no templates. Just practice, distilled case studies, and a bit of healthy audacity.
First, build retention from a business architecture perspective. It’s not “how do we please the client,” but “how do we embed the client into the ecosystem so he doesn’t want (and can’t afford) to leave.”
Here’s how it’s done:
- Create product inevitability. Not add-ons, but a complete system where one part locks into another. Want analytics? It only works with our software. Want updates? Only with a subscription to advanced support. This isn’t upsell. It’s infrastructure design.
- Implement client control through AI. Don’t guess — analyze. Integrating AI modules into your customer systems allows you to forecast churn, trigger retention scenarios on time, and — attention — personalize communication not by name, but by business needs. We wrote about this here: https://centerqod.com/ru/blog/qod-blog-2/ii-v-otdele-prodazh-ne-modnaia-fishka-a-neobkhodimost-5 and contact us - we will help you connect.
- Revise your sales system. Most sales teams know how to sell, but not how to retain. Retention is not the support team’s job. It’s part of the deal’s architecture. Your account managers shouldn’t be “relationship managers” — they should operate embedded client infrastructure. Want to know how to implement this? We have a piece: https://centerqod.com/ru/blog/qod-blog-2/ii-v-otdele-kontrolia-kachestva-3 — worth a read.
- Quality control — no illusions. A salesperson with KPIs ranging from “bring money” to “make the client happy” won’t perform. Control must be built into the system: regular NPS measurements — not for charts, but for triggers. If the rating drops — a retention scenario activates.
- Offer dynamics. Your product should never feel final. Even if you’re selling concrete. Your product line is a living organism, and the client needs to see that with you, he won’t get stuck. This reduces the anxiety of a long-term contract.
- The simple “Smart Exit” method. Sometimes it’s better to let a client go. But in such a way that he knows — returning means a new price, a new package, and a new manager. This creates reverse interest. The “precious access” strategy has always worked better than the strategy of being available to everyone.
Conclusion
Retention is not about soft skills. It’s business engineering. And if you still think clients stay because of good service and discounts — you’re stuck in 2008. Modern clients are retained through the architecture of your offer, embedded AI, the professionalism of your salespeople (without slides about “company values”), and a strategy where retention is a business model performance metric — not the job of the loyalty team.
Yes, it’s hard. But that’s exactly why we’re here. We’re not just consultants — we’re business surgeons. We don’t offer universal pills, but we do have experience building client systems in 14 countries — from B2B freight to the luxury segment. And if you’re tired of losing clients — maybe it’s time to start with an audit of your sales model. You can request one on our website — under “Book a Business Diagnosis.” Hard to miss.
P.S. If you’re serious about retention, don’t start with the client — start with yourself. You can only retain those who know why they should stay. And that, unfortunately, isn’t always obvious. Not even to you.
Bibliography
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- Competing on Customer Journeys [Electronic resource] // MIT Sloan Management Review. – 2015. – No. 3. – Available at: https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/competing-on-customer-journeys/ (accessed: 11.07.2025).
- The New Battleground for Marketing-Led Growth [Electronic resource] // McKinsey & Company. – 2021. – Available at: https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/growth-marketing-and-sales/our-insights/the-new-battleground-for-marketing-led-growth (accessed: 11.07.2025).
- 2024 State of the Connected Customer [Electronic resource] // Salesforce Research. – Available at: https://www.salesforce.com/resources/research-reports/state-of-the-connected-customer/ (accessed: 11.07.2025).
- Customer Experience Is the New Competitive Advantage [Electronic resource] // Gartner. – 2023. – Available at: https://www.gartner.com/en/insights/customer-experience (accessed: 11.07.2025).