Selling to your current client base is often overlooked; people often focus too heavily on attracting new customers that they forget to put much effort into selling to existing customers.
All businesses want to attract new customers and this is of course of great importance, but selling to people that have already done business with you is not only easier, but it also strengthens your business relationship with them.
If you already have a client base then you are in for some good news, you are sitting on a gold mine of untapped profits. Look at any other successful business, do they sell to you once and never contact you again? Of course they don’t, every successful business will make contact with you again through one means or another.
Look at Tesco, Dominos, Halfords, various estate agencies and digital agencies. They all make regular contact with their current client base and their prospective clients. This ensures that a relationship is built and there is a good chance that those contacts will buy from them again.
Expecting customers to come to you is a fantasy, wouldn’t we all love it if new business just came our way. If you currently think this way, pull your head out of the sand, this is not how you do business. It’s those that communicate, engage and build relationships with their customers that succeed and grow a successful business. You have to invest time and money into marketing for it to take any affect.
Attempting to attract or poach clients or customers from other companies is the most costly form of marketing that there is, despite this so many businesses focus all of their attention in this area. Take a step back and think about contacting your current client base before you contact anyone else.
If you don’t currently do any of the following, then you could be missing out on a substantial amount of income:
- Do you send letters, postcards or gifts to your client base?
- Do you call your current clients?
- Do you measure the results of the above?
- Do you offer exclusive offers to your current clients? (This adds great value to being a customer)
- Do you email your clients every month or at regular intervals?
- Do you thank your customers for doing business with you?
- Do you ask your customers for referrals?
- Do you ask your customers whether there are any clients or contacts that you could help them with? (Remember the more successful that you customers are, the more that they can invest into your services)
- Do you suggest products or services that your clients would benefit from, even if those are not services that your company offers?
Not only will frequent communication with your client base increase sales, but it will increase retention, referrals, testimonials and boost the overall value of your business and the brand that you have built.