Customers Over Prospects

A lot of the CEOs I speak with have getting new leads or finding new prospects at the top of their priority list for their marketing. And yes, that’s absolutely really important. But sometimes that focus comes at the expense of nurturing, supporting, satisfying your existing customers. And I wanna recommend for you that you rethink that, and put your first priority on your customers with your marketing, not just with your product support. And don’t let that at all suffer from your focus on your prospects. Here’s why.

Relationship

First, your customers, you’ve done all the work with your customers and all the heavy lifting and all the investment of time to have a relationship with them that’s strong enough that they bought from you. And you have a much better chance of having somebody that’s already decided to buy from you, buy from you again, than somebody who’s at the top of your funnel, who maybe only 1% chance of being a customer from you. So make sure you’re fully taking advantage of all of that investment in that relationship and pursuing any growth opportunities with your existing clients as a priority over what you’re doing with a 1% potential client. 

Growth
Secondly, studies have shown that existing customers buy more than new customers and they are much more profitable for businesses than new customers. So if you want to expand your sales, start by making sure you’re absolutely maximizing the potential value of each of your existing accounts. That’s more than having them buy from you again, that is having them buy other products from you, having them increase their level of support. There’s so many different dimensions of growing your account and especially if you’re a B to B company, it’s worth it for you to actually think about how your product offering can change to make it possible for your existing accounts to buy more.

Advocacy
And then third, the best sales person for your business is a happy customer. And you’ll find that, all of the investment that you put into really satisfying your current accounts and making sure they know what you’re about and why you help them and provide the value will increase the chance that they are sharing the good news about you and your services with people that you don’t even know.

So and as an example of this, customers over prospects, I was speaking with a CEO recently that had a product that he was struggling to get salespeople that could sell it. And he ended up having to let his salesperson go. And almost outta desperation, he went to his customer service team and said, ‘Hey guys, we’re gonna have to try to create growth through our existing customers’. And he told me it was one of the best decisions they ever made with some operational changes that went along with this related to AI they were able to greatly expand their existing account revenue, to the point that it totally took the pressure off, the rest of the business.

So don’t jump to the prospects. Make sure you’re looking just as closely and maybe even more at your current accounts and how they can be engines for growth for your business.