You are a company that is examining your revenues up to this point in the year. Whether it’s mid-November and there is less than 6 weeks left in the year or it’s the end of the first month of Q2, what should the focus be for you and your team? Your sales team is ultimately trying to the finish the year strongly while setting up your sales pipeline for a robust start to next year. Depending on the length of your sales cycle, it may be imperative to think about all of your options now in Q2 and throughout the year. Considering all the options to accomplish both a strong finish to the year and a full pipeline at the start of the new year, a sales plan is the best tool for heading up your lead generation efforts. Are these efforts enough, according to your sales plan? Are you covering all potential prospects to generate new revenue? Do those prospects only include new acquisition customers?
First option to consider – should your lead generation efforts be kept in-house, or should you engage with an outside resource to execute your plan?
Second option to consider – should you concentrate all your efforts in acquiring only new clients? Or should you consider adding current and past clients to your prospecting efforts?
Who Should Be Your Target Audience – New Prospects or Current and Past Clients?
Whether or not you choose to keep prospecting in-house or you choose to outsource this activity, take a deep dive and consider multiple options. If your objective is for your lead generation team to talk to all people who can purchase now, you should be reaching out to new prospects, current clients, as well as past clients.
Of course, lead generation starts with reaching out to new prospects. But is that your only audience? Have you considered a conscious effort to include your current and past clients in your plan? You don’t want to forget about these 2 groups of clients. After all, they are warm leads who, in theory should be an easier sell than a new prospect.
What are the top 8 best benefits of reaching out to current and past clients as you ramp up your prospecting efforts?
- Brand awareness – They are already familiar with your company.
- Budget spent – You have already spent precious budget on determining they were a truly qualified lead.
- Allocation of resources – You have also already spent time resources on acquiring this client as a lead and then a client.
- Acquisition costs – The cost of retaining a current client is far less expensive than acquisition of a new one – in fact the cost is 5X-7X less!
- Market research – There is a great deal of insights to be gained from your current client base. You can learn what they like or do not like about your product or services.
- Free advertising – With your current client base, you have a means of built-in word-of-mouth advertising. When clients are happy with a company they engage with, they tell others.
- Increased success rate – The probability of successfully selling to an existing client is far higher than successfully selling to a new client.
- Higher spend – Repeat customers spend an average of 67% more than first-time customers.
When prospecting for new business, why not tap into all your resources? This includes reaching out to all types of clients – new, current, and past.
Contact Intelemark today and we can help you determine and prioritize important actions you can take to consistently keep your sales pipeline full and increase revenue growth.