Create a gold mine by nurturing your existing customers

An easy way to increase your profitability is to up sell to your existing customers. Many of them are only familiar with one or two products that you sell. The opportunity to educate your existing clients about your full product range is within easy reach.

If acquiring new customers can cost five times more than satisfying and retaining existing one’s, then it’s a no-brainer where you should focus your marketing efforts. (customer retention and acquisition stats).

You could raise your repeat business by as much as 40% by simply up selling to your current customers. This is not to suggest that you halt all efforts to acquire new business as there will always be a churn factor but here are some ways you can cultivate your current and past client database:

1. Think customer lifetime value

To retain your existing customer base, offer attractive incentives to your customers in the form of promotional offers on new products and discount vouchers on repeat purchases. You can also be strategic by offering complementary products or services. Put some thought into what your customers are purchasing and come up with other needs that those purchases might trigger, e.g. if you are selling computers and your customer just purchased a desktop PC, promote your keyboards, mice, external hard-drives or PC headsets to that same customer.

2. Stay in constant touch

Sometimes you may not see your customers as often as you like. Get your sales reps to contact your customers by phone or e-mail reminding them about what else you can do for them. You could also set-up a drip marketing campaign and automate a process where you send a set of campaign mailers or content to sales leads at the right moment to help your customer move through the sales cycle. Drip campaigns empower you to consistently engage existing customers with relevant information based on time intervals.

3. Aim to stay relevant

Ensure that every time you connect with your existing customers, you are offering them something of value. If your messages don’t contain pertinent and valuable information, your customers will soon start to ignore or discard them. We live in a “what can you do for me world”, so to stay relevant, always exchange something of value.

4. Build relational bridges

Building solid relationships in business takes time and depends on how regularly you engage and interact with your customers. Call or e-mail customers that you’ve serviced a month ago to ensure everything is still fine. The point is to build a relationship outside of the immediate need.

5. Be a problem solver

Once you have successfully addressed a customer’s complaint, that customer is several times more likely to buy from you. Don’t overwhelm the customer by the profusion of self-service channels as a way to engage with your business – websites, e-mail, chat, social media support, interactive voice responses. This can create a lack of ability for the customer to make the best choice for themselves. Eliminate jargon and simplify processes so that you remove any obstacles to confusion and misunderstandings.

A small contribution towards customer retention can flow throughout the business system and reproduce over time. Customer retention drives profits. It’s far less expensive to cultivate your existing customer base, than to seek new-single transaction customers.

+27 21 825 3101 or email admin@leads4africa.co.za

Follow us on Social Media: