Heidi sloss on working with past clients

Capitalize Your Prospects by Leveraging Your Past Clients

Posted on February 15, 2012 by Heidi Sloss1 Comment

The other day I was talking to a woman who is a professional organizer and re-designer. She contacted me, out of the blue, to see if I needed or wanted her service. Her voice mail was a 15 to 20 second pitch to me about her services and what she could do for me. When I called her back a few weeks later (I was intrigued by how she got my number), it turns out that her marketing plan and sales strategy was pretty basic: make 100 cold calls s day, several days a week, and see who responds to her sales pitch. Period.

When we got to talking about her marketing and her actual sales pitch, I was fascinated. She made contact with several 100 strangers a week—no target market planning for her. And when I asked her about her work with past clients—those people who know, like and trust her already—she told me that she rarely has contact with them. Think of this, she is not afraid to put herself out in the world and contact perfect strangers for business, but she does nothing with her past, satisfied and happy clients.

And this got me to thinking. 1) What would it do for your business if you made several hundred contacts a week with prospects? 2) What would it do for your business if at least half of your contacts were with past clients—those who know, like & already trust you? 3) What would it do for your business if you asked each one of your past clients for a referral/introduction to someone who needs what you offer AND for a testimonial?

Now before you start thinking to yourself about all of the reasons why this won’t work for your business, let me remind you that IF you are great at what you do, if what you offer is valuable and can change lives or make people’s lives easier, then you are doing your past clients and their contacts a disservice by not offering yourself and your services to them.

So instead of telling yourself why making calls to prospects and past clients won’t work, start thinking about how you can make it work for your business. Instead of telling yourself why asking for referrals and introductions to your past clients contacts is not right for your business or industry, start thinking of how you will make it work for you. Instead of thinking, “No, I can’t or it won’t,” start thinking, “Yes, I will and it does!”

And let me leave you with this thought, if you don’t take the time to strategize your sales opportunities, how will you reach your financial goals this year? How will you get more clients? How will you reach new heights? How will you set a new sales ceiling? How will you make more profits this year? My recommendation is to take the time to work out a Sales Strategy that capitalizes on your prospects by leveraging your past and current clients.

Would love to hear your thoughts on this. Feel free to leave comments below.

Looking for a keynote speaker for your conference, convention, meeting or event? Please contact my agent, Shannon Dunn at sdunn@heidisloss.com or 469-471-1544.

Yours,