As business owners, I think most of us have got the message that it’s easier and more cost effective to sell to existing customers or clients than new ones.
However, it isn’t always easy to know what to do about it.
Based on experience with my own business and helping clients get more business from their existing customers, here are four ideas you might want to try:
The Magic Matrix is a simple but valuable tool for identifying where the opportunities lie with your existing customers. It will show you which products or services present the greatest opportunities and individual customers or customer segments with the highest potential. If you’ve never come across the Magic Matrix and would like to give it a try, let me know.
In addition to providing valuable feedback and marketing ‘ammunition’, a customer satisfaction survey can be a subtle way to sell more products and services to your existing customers. A few of our clients have found that asking their customers to rate them for things they never realised they offered can generate a surprising number of enquiries!
Do you have a process for account management? It doesn’t need to be complicated or even very frequent, but a regular contact with customers to discuss your business together and find out more about them and their challenges can create an opening to discuss your full range of products and services.
Finally, how much do you know about your customer’s behaviour? Do you keep a record of your contacts, transaction history and their response to your marketing activities? If you can keep track of which emails they open, which pages of your website they visit and your phone and written correspondence you might spot interest in something new you can sell them. If you haven’t looked at web tracking, marketing automation and CRM, you could be surprised how easy and inexpensive it is to gather and use this powerful information.
Trying any one of these activities could help unlock the potential of your current customers.
Chris.