Sell to Your Existing Customers!

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By Pete Cooper

If you've followed the advice of most online marketing gurus, you'll have a large database of all of your customers and their e-mail addresses. Alternately, you may have all of your customers subscribed to a newsletter. Either way, if you're serious about your business you should have a way of talking to past customers.

Why?

You might wonder why talking to existing or past customers is so important. After all, you've already managed to sell something to them, right? That's a bad attitude to have if you consider yourself business savvy.

If you ask the world's most successful sales people, they'll tell you that finding, and selling to, new customers is actually one of the hardest tasks they have. You have to get the trust of your prospective customer, get onto their level, and do a lot of legwork. You also have to qualify the customer, and see whether they can actually buy your product. It can be a lengthy process!

Of course, your existing customers are already familiar with you. You probably don't need to convince them of your reliability. After all, they wouldn't have originally bought from you if they thought you were crazy, would they? You've developed a reputation (hopefully good!) and you can use this to your advantage.

The only thing that could damage your chances of selling to existing customers is when your customers have genuine complaints about your service. If you're not reliable and offer a poor service, then don't rely on being able to sell to existing customers. Of course, most of you treat your customers in high regard; they're the lifeblood of your businesses!

Remember, They're Already Yours

Since you've already had some experience with your past customers, you can't sell things to them in the same way as you did the first time. Remember that you don't need to convince them of your reputation, skills or benefits as you did the first time. The goal for the 'second sale' is quite different.

One great way of selling to your existing clientele is to offer extended features on a service or product you've already sold to them. For example, if you have ten customers renting high-end Web servers from you, you could get in touch and offer database programming or extended support (say, call outs or 24/7). In this particular example, offering database services could be very profitable, most businesses have concerns with their online databases.

If the customer is happy with what they've bought from you in the past they'll seriously consider your new offers if the price is right. The worst that can happen is they will reject your new offer, but it wasn't hard to make it anyway! You have that mailing list... remember?

Using Personal E-mails

Most of your customers will have e-mail, especially if they found out about your product on the Internet in the first place! If you've kept a database of previous customers then this is a good place to start.

Remember, people receive junk mails everyday. Don't let yours become one of them! People spot junk mails which have subjects such as 'WOW!! THIS IS THE BEST DEAL EVER!!', so don't go over the top. A simple subject which is not over promotional but explains what you're getting in touch about will suffice. What appears in the 'From' field is also important. You must have something which the customer recognizes, either your name (if they usually deal with you) or the name of your company. If they recognize the name, they're more likely to read it.

When setting up your e-mail, make sure that the return e-mail address is a real one! Don't use an anti-spam address; these confuse people. Try to avoid using free e-mail addresses such as @hotmail.com or @yahoo.com as well, you're meant to be a professional.

For the body of your mail you need to write something which will apply to all of your customers, but which can be 'tweaked' in specific instances. You need to write in a fairly personal fashion. Brash sales letters won't really work with existing customers. You've already sold to them, remember? Always remember to ask what they think about their service so far and encourage feedback.

Some people will advise you use a 'mail-merge' program to send out your e-mails, but unless you have a few hundred customers, I wouldn't suggest this at all. The best option is to copy and paste each mail - personally - and initially try selling to only a portion of your customer list. This way, you can see what techniques work, and which don't. You're also guaranteed that a rush of new orders won't overwhelm you, which can actually be bad if you're a one-man company!

Using a Newsletter

If your customers are subscribed to your newsletter, they're already aware that it's an impersonal way of communicating. They probably understand that you're not writing specifically to them, but to a whole group of people. You need to acknowledge this too, and don't try to be clever by writing in a sincere personal fashion.

The same rules for the 'subject' and 'from' fields apply as with the previous 'Using Personal E-mails' section. The style of the writing needs to be informal, but not entirely personal. Treat your customers as a collective whole and, once again, encourage feedback from all of them. Throwing in a comment about how grateful you are for their business is always a good idea too, as well as how you're committed to looking after each one's needs. Then just outline your new services or features and tell them to get in touch with you to discuss it further.

Using the Phone

The telephone can be the best way to remotely contact your customers if you really want to speed up the sale process. Of course, calls cost time and money, but you can quickly judge whether the customer is really interested in your service, and if they are you can answer any questions on the spot.

I've personally found that existing customers will often be quite excited that you've got in touch, especially if they really love your service or product. They'll often want to talk about their experiences with it so far and sometimes you'll get some important pieces of information such as improvements you could make or problems they've had. Maximize your money and time and don't just try to sell, sell, sell. Remember to listen too.

With larger services and products, the customer often won't want to agree to anything while on the phone. You may need to meet with the client (if that's something you actually do in your area of business - consultancy, for example) to get the final agreement, but if it gets you more business, where's the harm?

Conclusion

I hope I've inspired you to think carefully about how you could leverage your database of existing customers. You shouldn't forget about them, repeat business is one of the easiest and most profitable ways of making money!

There is a maxim that says if someone buys from you twice, they like what you do, and if they buy from you three times, they love you. Fall in love with your customers, and reap the rewards!