When I am engaged to assist a business with Inside Sales, I always pose the question, do you know who your customers are and are they repeat customers?
I do get varying responses, but most of the time I get “yes I do but I think they are repeat but I need to check when their last order was”.
The first thing I like to do when engaged for a sales project, is generate a list of all the customers that my client has and then work out who they believe is a repeat customer or a VIP customer, and find out when they actually placed an order last. This list is the greatest list a business owner will have.
Everyone on the list has had contact with you and they can all be contacted again to build relationships, engage with them again for new orders or gain information on why they haven’t used you again, they are all WARM CALLS. They know your business, they know who you are and what you offer, you now need to win them back or keep them as a customer.
Your list can be divided into two parts, current and active customers and non-repeat customers. With your non repeat customers, you need to put on your sales pants on and start making those sales calls and gauging from them on why they have not come back to you, have they simply forgotten about you? start promoting to them, has there been a change in management, in which, you need to sell sell sell yourself, but you also want to know why they didn’t come back, what made them stop using you!
With your active clients, make sure you call them and show your appreciation, find out what makes them want to come back to you and never shy away from asking for referrals or reviews.
All these types of sales calls to active and non-active customers will help you in gaining more clients, it will also allow you to know what part of your business appeals to clients and what makes a customer not come back, it will then allow you to use that information to capture new clients, generate new leads and look at targeting new target markets.
Lastly and most importantly, do not forget about your customers, build that list in a simple excel sheet or a CRM and keep on top of that list, contact your customers, go out and see them, this will generate more sales, increase referrals and build a strong and lasting business relationship.