Repeat your business with customers - 1

As a statement of the obvious, there can be few sayings more transparent than repeat business being crucial for almost every commercial venture.

But how many of us, in practice, take existing customers for granted and expend most energy on winning new customers? Probably more than we would care to admit.

At a time when competition in many sectors is as fierce as it has ever been, treating the existing customer base well and extracting more business from them can often be more rewarding in the long run than chasing new custom. Attracting new customers, it is widely accepted, is costly for business compared to retaining existing ones. Yet many companies, while readily acknowledging the wisdom of the statement, do little about it.

For many sectors, the opportunities to obtain repeat business are substantial. What is required is time cultivating business relationships with existing customers, finding out all their present and future requirements. In short, getting to know their business as well as your own, recognising their day-to-day needs and those of the short to medium term that represent potential business for your company.

Effectively, what a company needs to do is compile a profile of each customer that outlines their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, failures and threats. From this exercise should emerge repeat business opportunities, areas where there is an actual or potential problem for which your company happens to have the solution. Being able to do this, and to come up with the most appropriate answer for that individual client, is almost guaranteed to engender customer loyalty and sales.

All of this business intelligence, though, takes effort and resources. It’s your call as to where and how this is applied to maximum benefit. Getting inside the customer’s head involves talking to them regularly, keeping in touch and doing whatever else you can to learn as much about the client’s business as possible. Most small to micro-sized companies are likely doing this already on an informal and casual basis. We are, at heart, all sales people after all. Networking is the name of the game regardless of how structured and premeditated it is.

What is always in our favour is the constant that is change. As has been stated here often in the past, the only thing that stays the same is change. And that applies as much to our customers as it does to us. Knowing what is coming around the corner for our clients is therefore equally important as predicting our own futures. It is from these changes that repeat business springs. The caveat clearly is the need to propose to the client the right solution to the change. One size does not fit all despite what clothing manufacturers may wish to tell us. For selling the customer something they don’t need, or, just as bad, something that does not do what you say it will, is the greatest danger.

Some steer is required here from the customer. Some are always going to be early adopters, others more cautious. In the end, it’s their money and livelihoods that are at stake. And we all, on each side of the transaction, want to play a long game.

The other problem with change and its management is human resistance. No-one really likes change from their familiar routine and frequently change can be portrayed as a threat. In terms of repeat business, how do we ourselves react to this?

If we have done our homework on the client properly, we should have a fair idea of whether the change is going to be viewed as a threat or an opportunity. The decision to be made is whether to present this sales lead as a solution to a threat or as a solution to a customer opportunity. It is the classic dilemma: is the glass half full or half empty?

On the one hand, selling the idea of the threat may be the easier of the two options. Companies often have little choice but to react to threats. But, by definition, the sales pitch will come across as negative. Push too hard and the client may well decide to stick their head in the sand.

Selling your solution as the answer to a potential opportunity is by far the more difficult path to take. But the rewards in the long term could well be much greater than a one-off threat solution. While the threat sale may be the easier to pitch, the greatest danger to your company could ultimately be the predicted threat not materialising.

Another factor bubbling away in the background is the way a hot market attracts new entrants. New markets can quickly become crowded places with the inevitable result being price erosion. This is another good reason for the small to micro-sized company not to neglect their existing customer base. Cheapest is not always best, customer service invariably counts for more.

Keeping a close eye on the accounts for repeat customer business is vital. A fall in renewals spells a problem somewhere that needs investigating. Consistent drops in revenue should set off alarm bells that a competitor is muscling in.

A steady revenue stream from a client is a healthy indicator of a successful relationship and an understanding of the client’s business needs. A company holding a client account should be in a better position to work it than a rival that does not have the in-depth knowledge of the customer’s business. Repeat business does not just magically happen, like any human relationship, it requires work.

In this context, working an account for repeat business means up-selling and cross-selling, getting clients to trade up to a more expensive package or selling them an associated product. Easier said than done, but sometimes it is just too easy to be sucked into selling the lowest priced product instead of taking in the bigger picture and the wider selling opportunities that may exist.