Let’s face it, once you have a good customer it’s far easier to offer more to these customers than it is to find new ones. Make sure you are making the most of relationships you have first.
To begin, we need to know who our best customers are:
- Look at your top 20% customers.
Here’s how to identify them:- They will likely already be 80% of your business income
- Repeat or regular small purchases
- Significant purchases
- Pay on time or before
- Customers who listen and who value you
- Easy to deal with (You can help by being easy to do business with, first)
- Buy the things you like to sell
- Understand more about your customers
- Ask them why they buy from you
- What else would they buy from you
- Ask them what their biggest challenges are
- Find new solutions for their challenges
- Research them (Web, Social, Google search)
- Ask their suppliers
- Ask their customers
- Segment these customers into groups to help find the patterns to reduce the future work when you are ready to attract more of them.
When it is time to clone your best customers, or rather find more of them, the key is to understand Who they are, in order, to know Where they are. Here’s some tips:
- Where were you introduced to them?
- Where do they spend time doing business?
- What community organisations do they belong to?
- Who do they sponsor?
- What professional organisations do they belong to?
- What do they read?
- What radio station do they listen to?
- What sport do they play?
- What do they do for recreation/socially?
- Where do they advertise?
- Who are their customers?
Naturally, once you know where your best customers are you’ll know where to focus your efforts, where to advertise, who you could sponsor too, where to spend time to build relationships. Remember people want to do business with people/businesses they like. Now you know where to steer your sales team to start replicating more of your best customers.