So you want to know how to increase sales? Maybe you are looking in all the wrong places as that old song goes. Have you considered revisiting your existing customers and begin a process to help them grow instead of focusing on your sales growth?
Can you answer these questions quickly and honestly?
Do you know the top 20% of your customers who deliver the 80% of your sales?
Do you know the bottom 20% of your customers?
Do you know the top customers who make referrals that actually turn into clients?
Do you know what customers generate the most profit?
Do you know how much your existing clients cost you to acquire?
Do you know if your existing customers are high maintenance, high profit or high maintenance low profit?
Do you know your customer’s customers?
When you can begin to answer these questions, you can construct a sales process to work your existing clients. This process allows your to not only understand how to increase sales, but how to increase profitability.
For example, what would happen if you ranked your customers not only by sales, but by profitability? Would you be surprised by the results?
According to sales research, your top 20% most profitable customers generate more than 150% of your annual profits. When you lose one of these (this is why customer loyalty is more important than customer satisfaction), you need to find 10 to 25 new customers who generate average profitability. Now does that make sense wasting your sales skills and resources on mining for new customers when you already have a known vein of gold?
Additionally, that bottom 20% drains the overall profitability of the company. If you can help turn them around to at least a break even point, you would have doubled your company’s overall profitability.
By creating a sales process where your best customers are continually:
Touched through additional meetings
Asked for their thoughts on growth and innovation
Listened to for their concerns about customer service and overall organizational management
You can strengthen those relationships while simultaneously increasing sales and profitability. And you are actually helping your clients grow their businesses.
Then by working through the least profitability customers, again through a process, you can help them build their businesses and even fire a few customers if necessary. Maybe those bad clients are slow pay. Have you spoken to them as to why there exists this challenge? Possibly, you can establish new higher prices based upon their payment and offer cash discounts if bills are paid early. Who knows, you are only limited by your own thoughts.
Yes, you do need new prospects because of attrition and time frame of your products and services. However, if you want to know how to increase sales, begin first with your best customers for that is your gold, your known treasure chest. The hidden goal is those 20% bottom customers.
How to Increase Sales Is Process Driven and Begins with Existing Customers Not New Ones - To learn more about this author, visit Leanne Hoagland-Smith's Website.
Like this article? Share it with your friends
 |
Related Businesses - Evan Elite Authors |
|
Dave Kurlan
Dave Kurlan is the founder and CEO of Objective Management Group, Inc., the industry leader in sales assessments and sales force evaluations, and the CEO of David Kurlan & Associates, Inc., a consulting firm specializing in sales force development.
Dave has been a top rated speaker at Inc. Magazine's Conference on Growing the Company, the Sales & Marketing Management Conference and the Gazelles Sales & Marketing Summit.
He has been featured on radio and TV, including World Business Review with General Norman Schwarzkopf, in Inc. Magazine, Selling Power Magazine, Sales & Marketing Management Magazine and Incentive Magazine.
He is the author of Mindless Selling and Baseline Selling – How to Become a Sales Superstar by Using What You Already Know about the Game of Baseball.
He created and wrote STAR, a proprietary recruiting process for hiring great salespeople, and he writes Understanding the Sales Force, a popular business Blog and is a contributing author to The Death of 20th Century Selling and 101 Great Ways to Improve Your Life, Volume 2. - Visit Dave Kurlan's Website |
|
Dr. John Oda
John Oda Ph.D NLP is a business peak performance expert, an author, and speaker frequently called upon to provide corporate training, workshops and seminars for many companies in the United States. He is an expert in coaching sales and business professionals in overcoming the behaviors and obstacles that may impede their sales results and affect their bottom line. Since 1995, John has created a speaking bureau such topics, which include: time management, sales training, human diversity, leadership programs and etc. He provides companies with a strategic plan to increase their bottom line by over 25 percent yearly. - Visit Dr. John Oda's Website |
|
Leanne Hoagland-Smith
Are your sales where you want them to be? Will you be one of the few who achieves sales success or one of the many who have failed to change? So what are you doing to change those results? Let’s be honest, with companies moving globally and at lightening speeds, the traditional business solutions are outdated and dead. My approach moves your business out of its comfort zone and secures your competitive advantage now. If you are seeking to increase sales, build customer loyalty, create a culture of great attitudes or just achieve some sleep filled nights, then we should talk because my clients have experienced exactly those types of results. Learn more about customer loyalty at http://www.processspecialist.com/customer-loyalty.htm Give me a call at 219.759.5601 for a free strategy session. P.S. If you are seeking a motivational speaker, sales trainer or small business expert that will leave your audience smiling and remembering, please feel free to contact me at 219.759.5601. - Visit Leanne Hoagland-Smith's Website |
|
Vwodek Wojczynski
Business Coach and Consultant Vwodek Wojczynski (pronounced Voy-chin-ski) brings fun, awareness, accountability and fresh perspectives based on his diverse experiences in life and business.
Born in Poland and educated in Greece and Canada, he is trilingual with 8 years experience in business development with clients in Canada, USA, Switzerland and Poland.
His approach is systematic and process-driven. He fuses the know-how of proven business methods with his commitment that entrepreneurs experience satisfaction and joy based on their values, motivations and strengths. He believes that businesses succeed based on their ability to generate value by providing what’s needed and wanted.
Ultimately, he trains executives and true business owners - people who work less, produce more, own businesses that run automatically after a while and make a difference globally.
His current research focus is the development of intelligent business systems and the application of emerging artificial intelligence technologies in business.
He is also an avid traveler, spoken word performer and visual artist. He resides in Toronto, Canada. - Visit Vwodek Wojczynski's Website |
|
George Ludwig
George Ludwig is a recognized authority on sales strategy and peak performance psychology. An international speaker, trainer, and corporate consultant, he helps clients like Johnson & Johnson, Abbott Laboratories, Northwestern Mutual, CIGNA, and numerous others improve sales force effectiveness and performance.
Though it's George's strategies and processes that help corporations increase productivity and performance, it's his tremendous energy and dynamism that spark the transformation. Again and again, clients remark on his amazing ability to unleash human capacity and inspire men and women to break out of their comfort zones. The result is a whole new type of salesperson.
His customized presentations teach achievers to make stunning advances in their lives. From helping salespeople realize cherished dreams to helping corporations exponentially accelerate revenue streams, George Ludwig leaves audiences and individuals empowered, emboldened, and clamoring for more.
George is the best-selling author of Power Selling: Seven Strategies for Cracking the Sales Code and Wise Moves: 60 Quick Tips to Improve Your Position in Life & Business. - Visit George Ludwig's Website |
|
Kim Castle
With nearly two decades in the advertising and design business, with clients like Domino's Pizza, General Motors, Direct TV, Pedigree, Wolfgang Puck, Higher Octave Music, Hollywood Celebrity Products, Disney, and Paramount, as well as thousands of entrepreneurs around the world define, structure, communicate, and position their business for greater profits, BrandU(R) co-creators Kim Castle and W. Vito Montone discovered that entrepreneurs could experience the same power that big brands command for a fraction of the cost with the world's only process-based results-drive Integral approach to business creation.
BrandU(R) is helping entrepreneurs grow with the power of extreme clarity from idea...to brand...to market(TM) and helping one million entrepreneurs become successful and whole so that they can make a difference in the world. Are you one of them?
If you want to experience clarity all the way to the bank(TM), get started now at http://www.brandu.com. - Visit Kim Castle's Website |
|
Anne Barr
Anne Barr has over 26 years experience in sales and marketing, six years as a franchisee. She has assisted over 367 business owners and purchasers to achieve their goals in career change, transition and exit strategy. She holds the designation of Certified Franchise Executive from the International Franchise Association, Certified Business Intermediary from the International Business Brokers Association and Board Certified Broker from the Texas Association of Business Brokers. Anne is active in professional organizations,
networking groups and volunteers for non-profit entities. As owner/operator of four successful businesses, Anne has proven people skills and enjoys helping clients find the right "fit" in business
ownership. Visit www.FranchiseOpportunitySpecialist.com for more information about me and my company. - Visit Anne Barr's Website |
|
The Evan Elite Authors program is currently in beta phase. For details please contact us.
|
|
![[Get Copyright Permissions]](http://license.icopyright.net/images/icopy-w.gif){kind=small}
