Commitment Tax

A universal way to understand someone’s continuing commitment to you is to ask them for yet more money.  Many companies try to tie-in customers (and lock-out competitors) by setting up programmes that add extra value, typically for a small ‘service’ charge for membership.

The software trade somehow got away with exorbitant and opaque annual maintenance fees for a couple of criminal decades.  I myself recall a few years ago having to provide an immediate hug whenever I heard the phrase ‘girlfriend tax’.

There are alternatives to a cash-based initiative that can keep, grow and safeguard relationships with your most treasured clients.  Rather than a cash transfer, what types of programme ever ask simply for their time?

In my early selling days, The User Group was a forum I never truly understood.  It was populated by the keenest customers my firm then possessed.  They’d run autonomously all year with the only ‘interventions’ being that my company would pay for their quarterly room hire and attend only when invited.  They always seemed a strangely happy bunch of people.

If you can put together some worthwhile plan of action that creates an on-going dialogue that asks for hours instead of dollars then I think you might well be onto something.