Paul shares tips that will open the door to repeat business with your existing customers.
Show Notes
Identify ways to create more value for your existing customers.
Ask your customers how you can improve for them.
Value-reinforcement: remind the customer of the value you deliver. They may reward you with additional orders.
Look for problems your customers may be experiencing…and solve them.
Visit www.ToughTimer.com to get started on the 30-Day Tough-Timer Challenge!
Pre-order your copy of Selling Through Tough Times from Amazon or Barnes & Noble!
Click here to purchase the latest edition of Value-Added Selling!
Thanks to our production team at The Creative Impostor Studios! Click here to book a complimentary consultation with Strategist and Producer, Andrea Klunder, to find out how to launch, produce, and grow your company’s podcast.
***
Thank you for tuning in. Our show is updated weekly with the questions you ask. So, please go to the home page to ask the question that you want answered.
Be sure to follow our show in your favorite podcast app and share this episode with a colleague or friend.
And most importantly…make it a big day.
How do I generate more repeat business with existing customers?
(Transcribed from podcast)
So last week I was in the windy city of Chicago. And I was there for a conference, actually, and I spent a half day working with sales leaders and salespeople in this industry at this convention. And we spent a half day focusing on Selling Through Tough Times.
And in this program I had a great question come up. One of the participants wanted to know, “How do you sell more to existing customers?” Pretty straightforward question. It’s a question that many salespeople ask themselves. But we’re going to tackle that on today’s episode.
Before we get into that, though, make sure you reach out to Andrea over at The Creative Impostor Studios. When it comes to podcasting editing, she is the best. Her and her team, they’re here to support you. They’re here to help you get started. Even if you already have a podcast and you’re looking to make a change, hey, look no further than to Andrea and her team. You can find their information. It’s going to be on this episode’s webpage, and you can reach out to her. She’s going to consult with you, talk to you and help you build your dream. So, reach out to her.
Not only that, but I mentioned Selling Through Tough Times. It is now available. Whether you like it on Audible, whether you want a Kindle edition, the paperback is, hardback, rather, is coming out soon. There’s a slight delay because of the delays at the printer with COVID-related stuff going on. So anyway, you can get the copy, just order it now. It’s going to show up. This is your go-to guide to sell more profitably during these tough times. We’ve got all the links available on this episode’s webpage if you need it.
So, let’s jump right into it: How do you generate more repeat business with existing customers? That is the question we’re going to answer.
So, number one: generating repeat business is a product of creating more value for that customer, pure and simple. So, step number one is, you’ve got to look to create more value for your existing customer. Think about who your targets are. Who do you want to go out there and generate repeat business with? You need to focus on them. You need to identify ways to create more value. And you can do this in a number of ways. The key is to do this with the intent to create more value, not to create another sale. You don’t need to focus on that. Just focus on creating immense value.
I’ll give you one example. I was working with a sales team, large, large organization: Fortune 50 company. Really, they’re huge. And we challenged their sales team to find ways to create more value. So, they went out to visit with their customers, and we called this a conducting a tinkering sales call. (Tinkering is a Value-Added Selling strategy.) And the whole premise of this tinkering sales call was finding ways that you can improve for your customer. And so, the salesperson entered this exchange with that motivation—to create more value. And he was curious. He asked his customers, “Hey, what’s, missing from what we’re currently offering? What can we do better? How can we better support you?” And in just having that short conversation, the customer said, “Well, you know, we’ve been looking for this product. We can’t seem to find it anywhere.” And the company happened to sell that product. And the salesperson said, “Well, look. We have that product. It’s available. We can support you with it. We have supply. It’s available.” And the salesperson was able to walk out of there with a significant sale because they just ask questions to look for ways to create more value.
Another salesperson in one of our training seminars, asked his customer, “Hey, how can we improve our experience?” And he gave the customer an opportunity to complain. That’s what he was basically doing: How can we improve? How can we get better? And the customer shared an example of what’s been bothering them. The company fixed it. They fixed the problem and fixed the issue. It was a logistical concern they had on how quickly they process the orders. They were able to fix it, and that turned into additional opportunity.
So, when you think about it, when you’re trying to generate repeat business with your existing customers, first focus on generating more value for them—re-creating more value for them. So that’s tip number one.
Tip number two: once you create all this value, remind your customer of the value that you do deliver. Because most customers forget about all the good things you do for them, all the value that you create. They’re not trying to, they just have other priorities. Other things come up and they lose sight of it. So, find ways to remind your customer that you’ve delivered on the promises that you’ve made. Customers are going to see that. And there’s a couple of things at play here. Number one, they are noticing that you made a promise, you delivered on it, so you’re reliable. People want to do business with reliable people—that’s important. But also, you think about the law of reciprocity: when someone does us a favor, we feel compelled to repay them. And so, when we can highlight to our customers, “Remember all this value I created,” we’re reminding them of that. And although they’ve already paid us for that value, they do feel a need to almost reciprocate, and come back, and maybe give us additional opportunities. We call that value reinforcement. We’ve got so much more on that topic in our fourth edition of Value-Added Selling, which is available on Amazon. I’d be remiss not to mention that. But that’s such a critical topic, so remind the customer of the value you do deliver.
And then, another tip, third tip: look for problems to solve. If you really want to create repeat business, identify problems that your customers are experiencing and look for opportunities to solve those problems. And you can do that by solving a common problem in a unique way, or you can solve a unique problem that the customer may be having. But the key is to just look for that and ask them as questions. Anytime there a problem to solve, there’s opportunity for you as the salesperson. Go on a fact-finding mission. Pursue those problems as if you’re like an investigative journalist, just talking to different departments, different people, trying to get to the root cause, trying to figure out what the issue is. And once you do that, build a solution to satisfy that need or solve that problem. And by doing that, it’s going to create even more opportunities in the long run.
That’s how you keep generating that repeat business. You do that by creating value. You do that by reinforcing the value that you do deliver. And then finally, once you do all of that, then you leverage it. You create opportunities to solve problems by looking for them and then finding them. And it’s not always easy to find problems to solve. And be glad that it’s not, because if it were easy, then many of your competitors would do the same thing. So, you’re going to have to dig deep when you go out there to try to find those problem.
Make it a big day.
