The Easiest People To Sell To!
The easiest people to sell to are those who are already buying!
In life as in business, so often the answer we are looking for is simple and staring right at us but we insist on ignoring it and instead massively over complicate the matter at hand!
I have been speaking to lots of clients recently about improving revenue through selling more of their services or products. It is a recurring theme for most businesses at the moment and almost always starts with a conversation about generating new business and the rabbit hole of assessing or building marketing plans.
One thing I have seen in almost all of the businesses I have worked with is a lack of awareness of the fact that the revenues that are possible to obtain from their ’existing’ customer base are ignored and not maximised.
Your existing clients are by far the easiest to sell to! It also does away with a lot of the time and cost associated with generating new business.
Why do we ignore this fact!
This can be for a number of reasons, it just seems to obvious a question to ask, the classic mistake in business, that someone ‘assumes ’ it is already being done or maybe its just because its not a vary glamours idea to come up with!
Let me ask you a question
If you asked the financial function in your business to produce a list of accounts by revenue and profitability from the last three years and compared them. What percentage of clients would not have seen a significant increase in revenue and profitability in this time? Do you know? Have you looked? I would bet good money its not because the business is not there!
Most SMEs target the overall company revenue line, and net profit on their year on year business plans but do not get more granular than this when it comes to client accounts. They may look to invest in structured marketing plans and have a target for new customer acquisition, which is completely correct (see my previous blog on ‘The two reasons businesses fail’) but do they ignore the obvious. Sell to people already buying.
Its also a matter of time
The second component to this is process is to take this a step further and ask how much time each client you have is taking up operationally. Often the ones that are on this financial report that are very high maintenance do not really generate a profit when you factor in the amount of time they take to manage. They stick out like a sore thumb! These are the ones you want to start thinking about.
Ask your operations team to review the financial report above and add to this by qualifying the ‘problem’ accounts by time and ‘aggravation’.
We all know that client that pays us little, expects the world and then takes forever to pay us.
Finally make a change
When you have done the above, financial and operation assessments, set targets for the ‘great accounts’ you already have and can expand over the next financial year.
Identify the high maintenance clients (change their behaviour, increase the price of their services or stop doing business with them).
Now you have a much clearer idea of the type of new clients you want to attract, you have aimed to increase revenue, find more time!
You are in a great place, in that you have a much clearer and more efficient approach to new business as you know exactly the type of clients you want to attract by looking at and assessing the customer base you already have.
Seems simple I suppose and I am sure there are businesses out there doing this but maybe. I hope this helps you believe in the power of the obvious. Take care and happy hunting.
