I spoke with an agency owner a couple of months ago who revealed that he had recently acquired a small web development business. As a part of integrating that business, he had grown his team by two developers. It was stressful because it meant that he had to figure out how to raise revenue. He said, “I have to find $70,000 before the end of the year.”
He had expanded capacity, but he didn’t have the pipeline to support it. To address this, he was doing what a lot of businesses do, beating the brush and looking for more customers.
For most contexts, marketing is a long term game with lots of challenges for any channel you develop. It’s an investment over time.
I asked him, “Are you taking full advantage of your past customers? When was the last time you had a meeting about their goals?”
He hadn’t met with any past customers recently and I explained that there was probably at least $70,000 in business if he took some time to reconnect (a mini case study of this: $80k From a Bit of Thinking .)
Because of the perceived risk of any sort of purchase, especially a high cost web development project, it’s much easier to sell to people who have already bought from you than to people who don’t know you from Adam.
Revisiting customers and selling them again is one of the easier ways you can add energy to your business to drive growth. When you do this, you have two options:
1) Sell them what you sold them again (ideal).
2) Sell them something new.
We tend to look at new customers as the only way to fund growth, but there are several hidden opportunities inherent within your business and selling past customers is a big one.
Featured image: 24-hours-clock painted by Paolo Uccello in Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence used as part of the public domain.