- I have products/services that are rarely sold without some sales effort
- It is logical, to me, that my customers maintain an ongoing relationship with me
- My customers could benefit from 2 or more of my products/services which are not always purchased together
- Related areas of business exist for which I have a business partner that I refer customers to or that I could consider moving into myself (it should be hard to answer "No" to this one).
If you answered "No" to any of the above questions, it is less likely that you'll get a positive Return On your Investment (ROI) from following this post. The more "No's", the worse your ROI will be. I'm not saying there won't be some value; its just not as beneficial to you as it would be to other SMEs. Maintaining a list of everyone who has ever bought something from you, is of minimal value. I am suggesting that a customers list is extremely valuable where you have an ongoing relationship with your customers or you could possibly sell something else to a customer in the future. This is not just a marketing list that you send flyers to on an annual basis; it is so much more...
The actual list
A good starting point is a Word document or Excel spreadsheet (again I recommend making the leap over to Excel because you can turn on sorting and filtering - my favourite, easy-to-use Excel feature). The important things that you'll want to include about each customer are as follows:- Customer type - what industry (or target market) they're in
- Customer company name (if not an individual)
- Key customer contact name
- Address - physical
- Address - postal
- Phone number - Office
- Fax number - Office
- Phone number - Key contact
- Mobile number - Key contact
- Date of first purchase
- Date of last purchase
- Date of first contact
- Key contact name - within your company
Why keep a list?
So what's the point? Assuming your following a basic sales process...
- For every 10 people you talk to about your business, 1 will become a prospect/lead
- For every 10 prospects/leads, 1 will be converted to a sale.
That's 100 people you need to talk to to get a sale. Even if this is exaggerated by a factor of 10 for your industry (probably unlikely), that's still 10 people that you've spent time with to get just 1 sale. You've already convinced each one of your current customers that you are/were the right person for the job. You know they have made the "buy" decision once already. This means that they have probably talked to at least 2 other suppliers (ie. your competitors) and chosen you. If you have another product/service that targets their needs and they have the appropriate authority/funding/desire, all you need to do is communicate with them. The probability that they will buy, or at a minimum be the 1 out of 10 people that becomes a prospect is very high.
Why not just wait for them to remember you next time they need a similar product/service? The reality is, they may not remember you at all. Depending on the size of the previous purchase and time since it occurred, they may have made numerous other purchases or you may have moved into an area that you didn't service when they last talked to you. So its up to you to use and reuse your customers list to find likely prospects (rather than cold-calling) and communicate to your customers the current status of your business.... that you're still in business for one, but more importantly what else you have that they may want or what else they need they you would consider providing.
Another reason to setup a customers list is to support your customer feedback process which frankly doesn't work very well unless you have an up-to-date customers list (see Actively seek customer feedback). Combined with some basic sales information from your invoicing system (or shoe-box), a customers list with a contact register will give you the makings of quite an effective customer feedback system.
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