Here is a powerful exercise I take my clients through:
How many total customers do you have, approximately?
(Think through your answers, and I will use example numbers.)
Let’s say you have 200 customers.
How many of those account for most of the sales?
We’ll assume the 80-20 rule, which holds true in most companies. So, 40 customers account for much of the revenue. That leaves 160 customers, each doing just a bit of business with you.
Key question: How many of these 160 can graduate into the class of 40 largest customers? As one company owner said to me last week, how many B customers can turn into A customers?
Twenty? Another forty?
These customers are the key to your growth. They are your highest potential revenue growth customers.
Do this exercise company-wide, but also ask each salesperson to do it for his or her own customers.
Identify these highest growth-potential customers and list them with each contact who can buy from you (this is very different from listing just the contacts that currently buy). Then communicate with them more than anyone else. Help them. Concentrate on them. Give them your attention. Turn them into A customers.
As an aside, the exercise I just laid out is extremely simple, but requires your proactive attention for a few minutes. It’s work that rarely gets done when we are reacting to one fire after another. This is the kind of proactive (but incredibly simple work) that systematic revenue growth requires. This is the kind of work I take my clients through. Then, I make sure they actually communicate with and sell to these highest potential customers.
Want to grow your business? Sell more to existing customers? Infuse your culture with the positivity of your happy customers? Implement a simple but powerful selling system based on your great value as opposed to reducing your prices? Reply to this email or call me at directly 847-459-6322.
My book, The Revenue Growth Habit, takes you through this exercise in greater detail, and lays out the other components which I have not covered here.