Loyalty could be one of the most undervalued concepts in business. Not just loyalty to your suppliers, but to your customers. For example, it’s all too easy to run after potential new clients, devoting all your time, money and attention on wooing them to your business, while neglecting the people who got you where you are - your present customers.
Who could blame them if they decided it looked more fun to be seduced rather than taken for granted, and left you to find another supplier, leaving you to rue, in the words of Joni Mitchell, that you don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone. This is true whether you’re selling to businesses or to consumers – letting your most important customers know they’re valued is often one of the cheapest and most effective ways of increasing sales.
But it’s a bit of a tightrope to balance on. If you don’t focus on marketing to fresh new faces, you’re probably missing it on great sales, and therefore growth, opportunities. So what should you be allocating where? New research from marketing experts Marketsafe has indicated that ‘one man bands’ spend around £1,100 on sales and marketing
per year. This isn’t a vast amount, seeing that the average sales and marketing cost of a new business client is £472.
So if you’re after new clients, it’s crucial it’s approached in the right way. Unfortunately, it seems it often isn’t, with many businesses not doing basic homework before making an approach. Less than half (43%) go to the customer’s website before contacting them and a similar proportion don’t check who is the most appropriate person to approach. A huge 16% of respondents confessed to conducting no research whatsoever into a prospective business customer before approaching them.
If you’re focusing on new clients, it’s important not to neglect your present ones, but even more crucial to make sure your money isn’t being thrown away through a lack of research. Like so much else in life, acquiring new customers is more a case of quality over quantity.
