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6 ways to easily get more sales from existing customers
6 ways to easily get more sales from existing customers
How to get more sales from existing customers?
I’d like you to think for a moment and ask yourself what is the most valuable asset in any business?
The answer is that your existing and past customers are the most valuable thing that your business has. Why? Because:
- these people know you,
- they know what you do,
- they understand the level and the quality of your work
- and the ways that you do it.
And so, when it comes to making more sales the easiest people to sell to by a mile are your current and past customers.
With your existing customers you don’t have any of the obstacles that exist when you’re going out there trying to do business with new people who have never come across you before; all those barriers around building trust and becoming likeable.
With your existing and your past customers none of those barriers are there, they are able and willing, and usually quite keen to buy from you again, if you are looking after them properly.
How do you maximise sales from your existing customers?
In the majority of businesses, the easiest way to get more sales is to sell to your existing customers. and the way that you maximise your income from your current and past customers of course is you need to communicate with them.
Keep in regular contact
I hope that you keep in regular contact with your customers because if you do it sets you up wonderfully well to be able to harvest what you’ve sown and generate more sales from those existing customers.
If you don’t communicate with your existing customers, it’s not too late to start. There are now new ways of doing business, and because of everything that has gone on you are able to communicate with your existing and your past customers with a higher frequency, and in different ways, both with the means of communication but also the content and topics that you talk about.
Be seen as a helper
The best way to generate more sales is to be seen as a helper not as a seller. Being helpful offers real value and now the importance of ideas is becoming like a currency in this new normal world that we are in.
So go out to your customers and give them, bring them ideas, and ways to help them. Because the way they get the fulfilment of those ideas is they’ve got to spend some money with you.
But how do we get more sales from existing customers?
Segment your customers
Segment your customers and talk to the ones where you know there’s some decent work. You see not all customers are equal, you’re not compelled to call every customer you decide what makes a better customer. It could be the ones that you enjoy working with most, it could be the ones that pay you the most money, it could be the ones that are most profitable. You need to recognise that not all your customers are equal and you need to segment them accordingly and that will impact everything you do.
Ring them Up!
The 2nd way to make more sales after you’ve segmented your customers, is to ring some of them! Radical hey! Just call them up and check in with them, that’s all you need to do. you could say
“Hi Bob how’s things? How is the new situation affecting you, I’d really like to know because if I understand what you’re going through it might help me to serve you better.”
These are great phrases that could be said on the phone to your top customers. You could say:
“I’m just calling Bob to wish you well for the next few months, how’s it all going?” and then genuinely be interested in how it’s all going because people love to talk about themselves, especially when they think the other person is actually genuinely interested. If you’ve a reasonably sized business you could use your team to help you – it doesn’t just have to be you making the calls.
You might want to think about having somebody whose job it is to talk to your customers, you could think about hiring a telephone person, the problem is that most people whilst they could do it, (we’re all capable of chatting on the phone!) but unless it’s the only part of your job then making proactive calls to customers gets pushed down the list. And no matter how good the intention was at the beginning it ends up not happening very much. It gets watered down. It becomes a side hustle. It never really happens to the extent that it could do a lot of good. You could look at the maths as to what will be involved if you hired a telephone person for instance. Because, don’t forget good marketing – which is all about making sales – good marketing is just creativity plus maths.
In many businesses, this doesn’t happen because there isn’t the resource, or the capability, or the focus to actually make those calls. You could use those calls to do a number of things. You could start them off in the way that I’ve just talked about. You would show people that you cared. That you’re really interested. You’d find out what’s been going on in their business and therefore that would allow you to segment them. It could be that you know that they’re going to need something in the immediate future, and others that are probably well set for the next 12 months. But you will be able to give your customers ideas, and ideas are the most valuable currency. Every business owner is recognising that things are different in some way and the person that can give them the ideas, the insights, those are the people that become most valuable. That’s how you secure that relationship for the medium term future when you get it right.
And if you don’t get through to people because they’re busy, you could send them a video and if that doesn’t work you could send an email.
Obviously it’s not as good as ringing them up but it’s a decent second best.
Use multiple media.
Things like retargeting, so this is when you’ve got the code on your website so when people have been to your website they can see you as you follow them around as they browse on Internet. You can follow them around the Internet.
You can use email because it is the easiest, most straight forward way.
You could ring them up or you can employ someone to ring them up.
You could send them a text but this can’t be very often. but when you do it’s very, very effective – providing their written well and constructed in the right way.
People consume messages in different ways, we’re not all the same, you have a preference that’s different to mine, your customers may have another preference. People have different ways in which they like to consume messages and indeed, what they pay attention to, what they read, and what they see. So multiple media is really important.
Integrate
The real prize for your business is to effectively integrate what you’re doing online digitally with what you do offline as well.
You could send stuff in the post. Because when you send things out in the post you get a much stronger connection with people. You get better consumption of the content when you drop it through people’s letterboxes than if you drop it in their email inbox. There will be times when you should be sending things out in the post to your customers. What you send out in the post might direct them to a web page. It could be integrating online and offline.
Sometimes the purpose of an email is to get people to book a call, or schedule an appointment, integrating online and offline.
The businesses that will fail are businesses that do not integrate. Online might be a smart thing to do but some of your customers will be uncomfortable doing that. They will be worried about clicking on a link. If you can integrate the online and offline together, then they can create fabulous results on your bottom line from your sales and marketing. Providing you get your head around the use of multiple media.
Create offers.
Offers with deadlines. Offers that are about them and make it easy for them to buy now. Different offers to different customers is okay, not every customer is the same. Create different offers, different things, based on what they are likely to respond to. Offer them different things based on what their worth to you as a business owner is. For ideas on offer creation take a look at the Market, Message, Media article here.
Guarantees
And the sixth one is an absolute stalwart of effective marketing, but it’s missing in a lot of businesses. I say missing but it’s actually there in quite a few but, it’s overtly missing. It’s making a marketing asset around something you already do – and creating a guarantee. One of the biggest constraints to people spending money, even when they’ve got money to spend is that when they are carrying the risk when it’s all on them they are more reluctant to spend. I’m not sure what or if there are ways in your business for you to just eliminate that risk, to remove it altogether. In a lot of ways, there are things that you do already.
So what could you do to remove the risk in your business?
In a lot of cases if someone bought something from you and they were really genuinely unhappy and they told you, you would do things to fix it you would, wouldn’t you? You’d do something to fix it, so turn that into a marketing asset. Turn it into a guarantee.You can get quite creative on guarantees. Thinking creatively about your guarantees is the key to making them work. Putting in place a good guarantee could be the difference between properly growing your business over the next three and four and five months, or staying cemented where you are.
When you deploy a guarantee properly alongside the segmentation, with the calling people, and showing that you care, and understanding them, and sharing ideas, and the use of multiple media, and the creation of offers that are genuinely constructed from their perspective well now we can start to really motor ahead.
Now you can start to put some distance between yourselves and your competitors.
Now we really can start grabbing opportunities – which are there all around us. Simply by getting more sales from our existing customers.
Want some help with making offers to your existing customers – we are really good at that! Schedule a call and lets put together some plans for your business.