Key Insights
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In today’s competitive marketplace, companies give much importance to finding, targeting, and acquiring new customers
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In the process of new customer acquisition, they often tend to overlook the significance of staying connected with existing customers
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Organizations, across all sectors, should take cognizance of existing customers. Such customers contribute massively to sales, if treated with care
Acquiring new customers is expensive. Selling to existing customers is a more pocket-friendly approach.
However, providing superior customer service is also not a guarantee for better sales with 54% of all consumers having higher expectations from brands, according to a Microsoft report.
While companies tend to give much importance to finding, targeting, and acquiring new customers, they often overlook the significance of staying connected with existing customers.
But it has never been as vital to sustaining your existing customers. In fact, they contribute massively to sales if treated with care. According to a report by Bain & Company, a 5% increase in customer retention produces more than a 25% increase in profit.
Building relationships with your existing customers is a unique way to increase sales.
We have listed 7 top-notch strategies for you. If you manage to improve every step of your sales process by even a little, your sale increases by a lot.
7 Easy-to-Implement Hacks to Boost Sales with Existing Customers
1. Research Your Market
Open the door to new, untapped opportunities with market research and analytics.
It is one of the best strategies to increase sales. By taking a deeper look into the market you serve, you can better understand who your customers are, what they want, and identify their pain points.
You can collate feedback through surveys, listen to your customers through social media, read trade articles, and mine data from Google Analytics to understand the critical elements.
2. Understand Customer Behavior
Selling to existing customers will be impossible without understanding customer behavior, a vital element of your marketing campaign.
Understand how your customers relate to your products or services. Try answering questions such as:
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Do they rely on just a single feature or more?
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Are they having issues with one of your product features?
This will help you to determine whether you need to provide upgrades in certain areas or not. Another approach is to provide personalized services or training to customers. Using this method will help you to enrich or extend your relationship with your existing customers.
3. Run Promotions
An equally effective strategy to boost sales is to reward your existing customers.
Promotions that reward old customers will go a long way in improving their loyalty and increase sales figures significantly.
The frequency of promotions can be weekly, monthly, quarterly, or annually. What matters is that it doesn’t stress your business. You must plan for promotions so that they don’t wear you out.
4. Update Your Offering
As your business grows, your offerings will change. Turn to your existing customers when it comes to deciding what offerings to eliminate and where you can utilize opportunities.
An easy strategy to boost sales is to look at the items that your customer base ignores.
Low sales items also clutter your business. When you strip away such items, your customers can focus on the products and services that they want.
Another factor for you to avoid is offering a large variety of products in each product line.
Such an approach increases the cognitive load that may lead to inertia which interferes with decision-making. All of us have experienced some kind of cognitive overload when it comes to making a purchase decision by scrolling through page after page of offerings on Amazon or eBay.
5. Upsell and Cross-sell
Selling to existing customers will be incomplete without upselling and cross-selling. In fact, cross-selling can increase sales by 20% and profits by 30%, according to McKinsey research.
Your biggest hurdle, which is the initial buy, is over now. You have established trust, and your customer has formed a favorable opinion about your business. Now, it’s time to think of the next step.
An upsell takes place when you convince a customer to buy more than they originally planned. On the other hand, cross-selling happens when the customer buys a different product or service.
6. Tell Your Story
Visual mechanisms can be your companion to increase sales from existing customers. Visual aids and infographics can help you spur into action.
This type of approach makes messages actionable while subtly convincing existing customers to make more purchases. The idea is to show customers how you plan to solve their problems with your offering.
With visual mechanisms, it becomes easier to encourage the customer to close the sale.
7. After-sales Service
According to a study conducted by Shep Hyken’s CX consulting firm, 96% of customers will leave business if they receive bad service.
When it comes to selling more to existing customers, you cannot ignore after-sales service. If you abandon your customers after the sale, they won’t come back in the future.
Wrapping Up
It is critical to remember that you are building the customer and not the sale. When you succeed in this, your sales will increase.
Considering the intrinsic role of sales in business growth, you must find effective strategies to increase sales and implement those for boosting sales, increasing customer lifetime value, and better ROI.
