After consulting with hundreds of companies across countless industries, products, services and markets, I can say with certainty most companies (yours included) are leaving money on the table.

We typically ask a simple question: Are your customers purchasing everything they could, or should from you? In marketing speak, this is share of wallet. Even if your initial response is yes, you’d be well served to either formally map your offerings to purchase data, or informally spend time perusing a sampling of your customer list to determine opportunities – because there always are!

You’ve probably heard the statistics.

  • A new customer costs 5X to acquire versus the cost to retain or sell to a current customer
  • You’re generally lucky to close 5-20% of new customers versus having a 60-70% success rate with existing ones.

Why, then, do companies focus all of their spending on driving new business?

I’d suggest you rethink the definition of new business to include not just completely new companies, but also selling new items to existing customers, partnering with new divisions, working within new departments, and so on. This applies both to your marketing budgets as well as compensation plans for sales teams.

Here are two strategies we use time and again:

Name Drop

Usually using a customer name is forbidden without express permission. In the case of a manufacturer selling to a large OEM – we simply profile the dozens of other divisions and hundreds of individuals at that company and then automated individualized prospecting emails that could expressly speak to our success with “Division X” to generate a sales conversation with “Division Y.”

Surprise and Delight

There is a misconception that you can’t generate word-of-mouth. In just about all businesses you can do things that keep you top of mind and more likely to be referred, and it can be measured. Just sending a newsletter isn’t enough. In the case of a mortgage broker client, we randomly mailed inexpensive but exciting promotional items to past customers and more than doubled their rate of customer referrals.

The fastest success for most of our clients comes from generating new revenue, regardless of whether it comes from a completely new customer. Gravity’s proven VMO service elevates your marketing so that every tactic creates meaningful interaction between you and your prospects and customers, progresses your relationships with them, and most importantly, creates sales. Contact us today to learn more.