(925) 977-3400It’s easy to spend lots of time trying to figure out how to bring in new clients. When you’re focused on growing revenue, it seems obvious that new dollars come from new customers, right? Most times, it’s easier to be focused on what you don’t have than what you have – which explains why new cars appear on residential streets in “clumps” since a neighbor’s brand new Corvette inspires us to “treat” ourselves to a too expensive new car as well. What’s more, new clients are really attractive – like a rock star under a spotlight in a huge arena surrounded by sound, the reality of who they may be in real life and how they operate on a daily basis isn’t as apparent (or important) as how completely awesome they seem at the moment. Ok, I’ll say it. New clients are sexy.
And they’re important. No revenue growth plan is complete without a full frontal attack on targeted, profitable, sizable new customers. Isolating the best opportunities, creating acquisition strategies and evolving a targeted prospect into a happy customer is the backbone of a long-term success strategy. Motivating and mobilizing the entire organization around these large scale targeted opportunities can elevate a sales organization from mediocre to massive performance and gets lots of attention from managers, executives, and stockholders. No bones about it, new clients matter.
But here’s the best kept secret in the world. For existing businesses in established markets, the fastest, cheapest, largest and most profitable revenue growth doesn’t actually come from new clients. This deserves repeating. Unless you’ve just invented some whiz-bang product, are working in a start-up, or are introducing a product to a totally new channel, your biggest, best, and highest impact revenue growth comes from people you already sell stuff to. It comes from the customers we have long term relationships with, already like our company, and know our brand. They have a good payment history, multiple connections inside our organization, and appreciate our products/services. So if they love us so much, what’s the catch? The problem is this: unfortunately, they feel the same exact way about our competition.
Existing clients, especially the big ones, cheat on us. They have multiple vendors, yet we think we’re special. They have different types of needs which require different solutions, but we think they buy on price. They try to manage their business risk buy spreading some of their business around, then we think they’re disloyal. Lots of assumptions and ginormous dollars left on the table.
Since our existing customers are already tied into our systems, processes, services, and procedures, sometimes growing our share with them is as simple as asking. What could we do to earn more business? Who else do they use and why? Why is that important? What business issues are they working to solve in the next 90 days? How does our product, service or expertise relate to their solutions? These kinds of questions have a real advantage with customers we know well since we can often add value to the conversation from our experiences, observations and layered internal relationships. Additionally, clients we have a deep relationship with are more apt to share information openly, candidly and abundantly. This allows us to use meaningful questions to figure out how to add more value and differentiate us from our competition, calling in the resources we find we need as a result of our conversations and the long standing relationships the client already has with our company.
Often, getting a much bigger share of a customer’s business only requires a simple solve. Sometimes the only thing lacking is that we haven’t asked. Business relationships, like some marriages, get a little, well, stale. Over time, we tend to be less likely to ask questions, far less curious about what our partner thinks and feels, and make a few too many assumptions. If this lasts for years, it can lead to a meltdown – lots of hurt feelings, resentment, and even divorce. Couples who avoid this often work hard to keep interest in each other, have meaningful conversations, and develop shared interests other than their children. Couples who last are disciplined. They make “working on the relationship” a priority and know that effort is required to keep each other interested.
Business relationships are a lot like marriages without the monogamy. Our customers can have a spouse (us) and a few significant others. We may get mad, we may get jealous, we may have hurt feelings, but we can’t really control their behavior. The only thing we can do is be proactive about continuing to nurture, grow, evolve, and develop the relationship. Some sales people use account planning – a process where they tailor an in-depth, focused, written and accountable set of activities designed to foster business results to each existing customer’s needs. Others take a more casual and less systematic approach, checking in with major decision makers at regular intervals and looking for meaningful reasons to reach out on a periodic basis. Whatever approach we take, it should be proactive and consistent – aimed at uncovering new areas of opportunity and learning about the customer’s current and future efforts, goals and challenges. So just like a rock solid marriage, we’ve got to stay interested, attentive, and focused on developing the relationship.
Remember, if you aren’t interested in your clients, someone at your competition is. Sometimes, by the time we notice a customer has chosen another company, it’s too late to do anything about it. If we get a little too comfortable and aren’t on our game, one of our competitor’s sales people – who’s just a little hungrier and interested – can get a toehold with our best clients. Keeping in close contact and making time for business conversation is the surest way to fan off competitors. This doesn’t include social interactions like golfing, lunches or other “business-ish” events. Those are important, but it’s the type of conversation and information exchange that keeps and grows clients, not just social relationships. If we want to build moats around our customers, we have to deepen the quality of our understanding of their needs and constantly create solutions – not just be their friends. Personal relationships make it fun, business relationships make it profitable. Having both is a wonderful by-product.
Focusing attention on the highest value, greatest upside existing clients would be like having a dollar bill in your wallet suddenly give birth to lots of other dollar bills – it’s shockingly surprising, instantaneous, simple, and requires minor amounts of intervention on your part. Just be sure if your currency is suddenly birthing that it’s a Benjamin Franklin rather than a George Washington. Focus on the high yield customers and your wallet will grow accordingly.