inventory, and $200 off the high-end Hickey Freeman suites. He mailed 1,164 invitations at a cost of $558 and sold 56 suits in 39 transactions. The average sale was $1,110 with a total volume of $43,307!   This case study is a great example of the power of marketing to your current customer base. Max knows who his good customers are and he takes advantage of that by personally inviting them to do business with him, again and again. It also demonstrates the power and importance of collecting information about your customer and how it can be used to make you a lot of money. Sample Customer Database Using MS Access     The Prodigal Customer - The Lost 20%   The average number of customers that stop doing business with you is about 20 percent annually. To achieve just a 10 percent increase in sales you have to add 30 percent more customers! These statistics are startling considering the average business spends six times more to attract new customers than it does to keep old ones. What is your customer attrition costing your business?   Factoid: A survey on "Why customers quit" found that of the 20% that stop doing business with you   3 percent move away   5 percent develop other friendships   9 percent leave for competitive reasons   14 percent are dissatisfied with the product or service   68 percent quit because of an attitude of indifference toward the customer by the owner, manager, or some employee.     This means that 82 percent of your customers that stop doing business with you are unhappy. Unfortunately, unhappy customers dont usually complain about their feelings. A study from the Research Institute of America says that the average business will hear nothing from 96 percent of unhappy clients who experience rude or discourteous treatment.   Not only is having unhappy customers not doing business with you driving up the cost of customer acquisition, but it is costing you potential lost sales. The same study found that unhappy customers will tell their experience to at least nine other people, thus jeopardizing further potential sales.   So, what do you do to get all of these people buying from your business again? You assume the statistics are right and that you did something to offend them in one of your business transactions. What do you do to make your spouse start talking to you again after you have offended her? Thats right, you humble yourself and apologize and ask for