It's All To Do With Your Existing Customers

Dan Elson left me this comment last night:

"Customer retention is the key here everyone. Keep retaining your customers and keep selling more and more to them.

"0% of your customers account for 80% off your sales...so why do companies focus so much on acquiring new customers?

Yes you always need knew customers but surely reading the above statement, don’t you feel retention of your customers is more effective?

Keep your customers happy, and sell more and more to them. You’ve already done the hard part, you’ve already acquired them! Now sell more and more to them through cross selling and up selling.

Customer relationship marketing is the key thing here. The more companies, especially the smaller ones realize this, the more money will be made :)"

I could not have explained that better myself.

Previous customers are a rich ground of extra business. Finding new customers is always a harder road in which to make money. The job of selling to previous customers is much easier as you have already laid the foundations the first time you sold to them. Plus, it is much easier to upsell to a customer that had used you previously.

There are lots of companies focussed on growth by obtaining new customers. Lots overlook the already established large previous customer base they may have as an opportunity to grow.