In any business the prospects are of highest importance! They are always wanted.
I am sure you are also looking for new prospects. You know that there are hundreds of them available all around, sadly you are not paying attention to them. It is just like a farmer who has many cows, but he is just not milking his cows. Rather, you are looking for milking the neighbor’s cow, whereas your own cows wait. What a Funny situation!
The same thing is there in sales as well. You have got many hot prospects, waiting for you to contact them. But sadly, you are distracted and searching elsewhere.
Who are these hot prospects? Where are they waiting? How come you have been unaware of them? If the answers to these questions interest you, then read this article right till the end.
My name is Rakesh Sharma and I support the business owners and salespeople to scale up their business and maximize their profit. In this article I am going to discuss, who are these hot prospects? Why are they so hot and waiting for you? And how can you milk them?
But before we go ahead, I advise you to get a pen and notepad and make notes on how you can apply these tips and tricks to your personal business growth.
Friends, so as I just mentioned that there are hundreds of hot prospects you are not paying attention to. These hot prospects are your existing customers. Your customers, who are using your product and services right now and who have used it in past.
Because of your ignorance or poor relationship strategies you may not be in contact with these customers anymore. But these customers are really the ‘hot’ prospects because of some especially important reasons.
Salespeople face two challenges in every sales process. These challenges are the visibility and credibility. Visibility means that your potential buyer must know that you exist in market. He must know that you are potential supplier for the product he wants. You must be visible to him at the point of purchase. For this you should have good amount of brand awareness in the market so that prospects can recognize you when you are calling on to them. If they know you then at least you will get a hearing. The other challenge is that of credibility of the supplier. Large number of orders are lost because you do not appear to be credible and convincing to the prospect.
But when you are dealing with your existing customers both these challenges are not there. Therefore, getting the new business from the existing customers is comparatively extremely easy. It has been found through various researches that getting the business from existing customers is and ten times easier in comparison to getting business from new customers.
Let us now understand why it is easy to get new business from existing customers. Primarily, there are three reasons which I am elaborating below-
1. You already have a relationship with them: You know your existing customers well. You have spent time in knowing them and in selling the product to them previously. You have already developed a certain rapport with them. Because of your good services and products, they like you.
Because of these reasons you do not face any challenge of visibility with the existing customers. You do not have to make special efforts for marketing your products to them. You can get easy entry to your existing customers because of your previous relationship with them. In case you call them, and they could not pick up your phone call because of whatever reason, you will always get a return phone call from them. Not only this, unless you have terribly disappointed them, most of them will welcome you and also greet you with a cup of tea. Their only requirement is that you be in touch with them.
2. They already accept your credibility: The existing customers have first-hand experience of your products and services. They know by experience how good your product is. Because of this, they have confidence and trust on you. Because of this you actually do not have to make a sales pitch to them or put in any kind of extra efforts to win over their confidence. They are familiar with your way of working and they have experienced your deliveries in past. So when you are presenting them some new product and services they will not question your credibility, and they will have a high level of trust right from the beginning. They respect you for your integrity and service levels.
3. You know your existing customers’ behavior: Because you know your existing customers, you are confident of their buying behavior. This is another reason why they are your hot prospects. You know their buying process and their buying cycle. You also know their requirements. You know their spoken and unspoken expectations. Since you understand their business very well you can pitch the right product to them. You also know their credit worthiness. You have the knowledge about their past payment behavior. Therefore, you will also be happy and comfortable in doing the new business with them.
Because of these reasons the existing customers are the hottest prospect base for you, and they are waiting to be milked by you. They will always prefer to buy from you in comparison to any other option in the market. I do not think you can ask for more than that. Existing customers beat a cold call by 1000:1.
Here are some ideas to get your existing customers to buy even more from you.
1. Sell them new products: People like to buy new products. Especially if you contact the existing customers who already have a good level of trust in you. They would like to buy from an old friend. You can create excitement about your new products and tell them how it is going to make their life easier, faster and better. You will be able to sell them more and easily.
2. Sell them and upgraded products and an attachment: The technology keeps changing day after day. You can always sell the upgraded version of the product being used by your existing customer. You can also sell some latest attachment or accessories which can fulfill some additional requirements of your existing customer.
3. Sell them more of the same product for different location: If you are constantly in touch with your existing customers, selling them the product which they are already using for different location will be a very logical sale. Customer will not take much long in deciding this.
4. Always try to sell through up-sell and cross-sell: Upselling and cross selling are very common ways of getting new business from existing customers. Particularly in businesses like those of machines, restaurant, travel others similar to these cross selling and upselling have a good potential for creating new business from the present customers.
Besides this you can ask for referrals from your existing customers and open doors of creating new business from them.
Your existing customers are the goldmine for your new business. However, you may not be able to get this benefit from existing customers if you have failed to establish the relationship with them. There are many businessowners who do not keep in touch with their present customers after sale, there can be no bigger mistake than this!
