Loyalty. How do you earn it?

I spoke with an entrepreneur who’d purchased an existing business last week. He trained with the previous owner for six weeks and expressed surprise that the flurry of orders died down after that. His question: “What should I do?”

This is loyalty 101. No customer list existed (more on small businesses using databases later). Yet, the sale had included the previous transactions and goodwill of this business. I suggested contacting previous customers.

What’s the first thing you would do?