It’s easy forget that often the fastest and simplest route to new sales could be right under your nose: the key accounts who already know and love you. Finding new clients is a costly process (as much as ten times that of keeping an old one), and repeat clients can spend as much as 67 percent more than the new ones. And we already know how key account growth can be the key to surviving a recession.
Here are ten creative ways for your sales team to sell more to your best existing clients — all while improving customer success along the way.
1) Consider performance-based contracts. Many service-based companies have increased their revenues by offering a “if we don’t deliver, we don’t get paid” type of agreement with their best clients — but with a healthy percentage of the gain. This also further incentivizes your sales team to provide the best possible customer service for their clients.
2) Pursue the upsell. Upselling doesn’t have to be a dirty word. In fact, it can help make your clients even happier than they were before when you offer them more value than what they were originally expecting.
3) Stay in contact without selling anything. You want to stay at the top of your clients’ mind without bugging them. Have your sales team keep in contact with useful industry news via email, phone calls or even handwritten notes, letting them you’re available for consultation when they need you.
4) Think complementary services or products. This is the printer and ink cartridge solution — is there something your customers are using or buying that you can offer?
5) Consider your timing. Is there a key time of year or some seasonal trigger when your customers are more likely to be open to your messaging? Holidays, financial reporting and other calendar-related events can be the key to finding new ways to open up sales opportunities for your best accounts who otherwise might not be listening as closely to your message as you’d like.
6) Help your clients sell more. In a B2B situation, often the most successful way to sell more of your products or services is to improve your customers’ sales. Think certification programs or discount incentives that your clients can then pass on to their own customers.
7) Remind your clients of all your offerings. Don’t make the assumption that even your best clients know about everything you can do for them. Remind customers often of the types of projects you’ve completed via case studies or other marketing tools, using cross-selling to increase your revenue.
8) Design an in-house referral program. If one team is currently using your products and services, ask them to recommend you for other departments within the company who might not know about what you do, and create incentives for them to do so. Offer steep cash discounts for successful referrals, which can result in stronger client relationships and higher income.
9) Allow your clients to help design what you sell. Consider creating a program where you bring in your best customers and allow them to help you design a product or service that meets their needs in a way that you couldn’t have designed on your own. By allowing your clients to have a say in what you sell, there will be more buy-in from the beginning plus allow you to better sell to other clients who might have the same needs.
10) Consider lifetime value over one-time purchases. Incentivize your customers this year so that you can reap the benefits later with offers like crediting the full cost of last year’s product toward an upgrade. In the meantime, you can expect that your clients will buy auxiliary products and will become impressed enough with your customer service that the lifetime value becomes even more valuable than before.
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