Yesterday I spoke about selling to current customers and how that will dramatically increase your sales without spending a dime! As a reminder – here are some benefits to selling to current clients.
A few other benefits of selling to your current customers:
- The additional sale or work they need is often much more fun and profitable.
- When you concentrate on meeting your best customers’ needs, you make it almost impossible for your competitors to steal them from you.
- They are much more likely to refer their friends to you. Since people tend to be friends with people similar to them, the quality of the referral is very high.
Yesterday I gave 2 ways to achieve that goal… and here are 3 more!
CLICK HERE FOR YESTERDAY’S ARTICLE
THREE: Increase your customer order size each time they purchase. Plan in advance what related products you will offer during the sales process. When McDonald’s trained their employees to ask, “Do you want fries with that?” they perfected upselling to the point that it became a running joke with many people. But it worked!
Online, Amazon has implemented upselling effectively by adding a section that says, “Customers who bought this item also bought…” How many times have you purchased the recommended add-ons? I’m sure you have at least looked.
Train yourself and your staff to ask the right questions that will lead to add-on sales. Be sure that they know to offer the added product as a solution to a problem the customer may not even know they have. After all, you are the expert in your products and know what other products they may need. In fact, it could be argued that you have a responsibility to offer the add-on product to your customer if it will truly solve their problem.
FOUR: Review your current customer list with an eye toward identifying customer needs that you can offer a solution to. Start with your largest customers first. In most businesses 80% of the sales come from only 20% of customers. It is only obvious that you should start to sell to them first. Remember, these people have already shown that they both have a need for your products or services and the money to spend on solving their problem.
FIVE: Entice your customers to refer their friends, families, and associates. The best way to get referrals is to do such a good job solving problems, in a way that is both enjoyable and convenient, that people just want to brag about you to their friends. So make sure you WOW them!
Then simply ask them for the referral. But don’t just ask them for names of people who you can contact. No one wants to unleash a hungry salesperson on their unsuspecting friends. Ask them for names of people who have similar problems. For example, let’s say you just took photos of a couple getting married. When you go over the finished pictures with them, ask them if any of their friends are getting married, graduating, just had a baby, etc. This is more likely to get a referral because they can remember people in those situations easier than the mysterious someone who may want their picture taken.
Offer an incentive for referring. A discount for both them and the new customer often helps overcome people’s hesitance. Just look at the power of affiliate marketing.
Now I know that this all seems like a lot of work, and it is. But the rewards of doing the work are huge! I have worked with numerous business owners who made improvement in these four areas and experienced an increase in sales of 25% to 100% without any additional costs in advertising.
Watch our four-part Jump-start Your Business Now webinar series at www.freeISBstrategies.com where we will explore how to quickly increase sales without spending a lot on advertising in even more detail.
