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Nail Shut the Back Door By Tom Reilly Am I better off as your prospect or your customer? You know where I’m headed with this question. Some companies treat their prospects better than their customers. Consider these facts. It costs ten times more money to get a new customer than to keep an existing customer happy. The average U.S. Corporation loses half its customer base every five years—that’s ten percent every year for five years. On average, it takes three calls to close an existing customer on a new piece of business and seven calls to close a new prospect on a new piece of business. In your pursuit for new business, how much time do you invest in protecting and growing your existing customers? This is defensive selling—nailing shut your back door so that you don’t lose as much business from the back door as you bring in the front door. Offensive selling is filling your pipelines with new business. A major problem in sales is that some people are so obsessed with gaining market share through the acquisition of new business that they ignore wonderful growth opportunities with existing customers. I call this phenomenon, “pipe-line-itis.” These questions will help you determine if your company suffers from this obsession: Are you working as hard to keep the business as you did to get the business? Do you treat your customers as if they were prospects? (They are, for the competition.) Are you getting as much business as you can from your existing accounts? Have you fully penetrated your installed base of business? About the author: Tom Reilly is a professional speaker and author of Value Added Selling. © 2004 Tom Reilly |
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