Sales generation drives company morale and longevity– but in a tough economy like our current financial climate, it can be challenging to create the growth your company needs realistically. So it’s never been more critical to examine your sales strategies, understand your client base, and keep pace with the competition. 

And one high ROI but often an underutilized tool for increasing sales is your existing client base. The people who have already bought from you are the perfect place to focus your efforts. As a result, you’ll create brand ambassadors, find natural new products and services, and have lower sales costs. 

So let’s go over seven ways to leverage your existing clients into higher sales at reduced costs. 

1. Referral Programs for Easy Client Base Expansion

It’s a simple fact: your past and current clients are talking about you to their friends, family, and the public. And the bigger impact you have on their life, the more they talk about you. So if you’ve done a stellar job on a project or given them a product that changed their life, the more likely they are to find excuses to talk about you.

So creating a referral program– particularly one that gives an incentive to your client to purchase from you again– is a no-brainer way to increase sales. And the numbers speak for themselves:

• People are 4 times more likely to buy from a brand if they get a referral. 
• Customer loyalty is 37% higher in referred clients. 
• Referrals spend 200% more on average than a cold marketing effort.

2. Customer Feedback Eliminates Guesswork

If you’re not actively collecting and studying how your clients feel about their experience with you, you’re not taking advantage of low-hanging fruit. Your clients will tell you why they stay or go, if your sales process works for them, and even what new products or services they’re looking for. 

Create regular and automated opportunities to hear from your client base by sending email surveys after client interactions. Ask your clients to leave reviews, too– you’ll build more reliable social proof, increasing the likelihood of new customers.

3. Cross-selling and Upselling

The people you’ve already successfully closed a sale with are self-identified, warm future sales leads. Regularly review your client base to find natural opportunities to cross-sell and upsell. But this topic can come with some sticky problems, like coming across as more worried about selling as much as possible rather than what your client needs. 

Your client relationships depend on trust, meaning empty sales pitches for useless add-ons is likely to hurt the relationship. So take the time to understand your individual clients, matching specific products and services that will genuinely add value. Clients will thank you for offering to meet their needs more completely– but they’ll often leave pushy salespeople who treat them like numbers.

4. Incentivize and Capitalize Your Reviews

We touched on the power of reviews earlier, but it deserves a point all its own. Today, most people begin searching for products and services on their phones, meaning Google is pinging their location for relevant options. This will help even the smallest business compete for views, but if your website or name doesn’t come with reviews, you lose an incredibly valuable opportunity to sell. 

Reviews become success currency with so many options, substitutes, and unknowns from online shopping. Reviews create a social proof or a way for someone to conduct peer reviews from a relatively objective group. So great reviews mean you likely won’t regret your purchase, and you can take a chance with that business.

The more you incentivize leaving reviews, the better. But always make sure that you are asking for honest reviews. Once the internet catches a company cherry-picking or forcing positive reviews, you’ll struggle to recover brand integrity.

5. Study Shopping Patterns for New Revenue Methods

Market research is another critical area where many small businesses don’t feel they have the time or resources to invest properly. But understanding your client base as a complete picture will help you identify the impact of your closest competitors, how accurate your pricing is, and even highlight patterns in other client needs. 

For example, a construction company’s client demographics may reveal that business park investors also look for tenants or office decorators. So you could create a marketing branch to help fill the business park you build and serve an additional need for your existing clientele. Or you could create a partnership with corporate interior designers, getting a commission from your referrals.

The important thing to remember is that you don’t necessarily have to fill the adjacent needs yourself. Brand partnerships are emerging as an increasingly popular way to serve client needs completely while increasing revenue for the entire collaboration.

6. Rewards Programs to Incentivize Repeat Sales

Selling to an existing client is 5 times less expensive than finding a new client. So investing in multiple methods to create repeat sales will often carry a higher ROI than methods aiming to generate organic business. For example, a rewards program is an easy, cheap way to increase repeat sales. 

You’ll often see store rewards programs where clients repeatedly need more products or services. But this system can still work for significant, one-time sales, like construction companies. 

You can create custom offers, like discounts for investors that sign you up for another project within two years of completing the previous project. These offers will keep you at the forefront of your client’s minds and may encourage them to start another major deal sooner than they would otherwise.

7. Create New Products and Services

The saying “if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it” can take a thriving company and dump them into irrelevancy and eventual failure. Apple is an excellent example of a high-success company that maintains a high focus on its ideal client, never shifting from its end goal. But, they continuously innovate and meet that ideal client in evolving ways, anticipating market changes and being an early provider of new tech.

Don’t lose your hard-earned client base through product or service stagnation. Instead, update your offerings, expand your product line or services, and reach new locations. If your industry relies on methodology, educate your client base on how you keep up with new standards through education and certifications. 

And whenever you do something new, ensure you’re showcasing it properly so your client base understands. Creating new products without explaining the why or relevancy often results in massive revenue loss.

Ready to Take Advantage of “Easy” Revenue?

So many business owners spend so much time working their trade that they are unable to see low-hanging revenue fruit. But with so many simple systems and methods to increase your reach and snatch up more market share, pausing the way you do business can create exponential ROI.

Get the most out of your business growth by enlisting the help of growth professionals, who can shortcut the trial and error straight to the most powerful and effective methods.

Think of us as a third-party partner committed to supporting you from start to finish. That includes discovery, implementing changes, and sticking around to see your business recover. And we’ll still be there in a year or two to help you adapt to new needs and growth!

Contact us today for a consultation!