5-Minute Selling

CHAPTER 19CALL YOUR CURRENT AND FORMER BEST CUSTOMERS

Proactively calling your best customers leads to them un-niching you, and you un-niching them. In turn, they start to buy other products and services, and your business expands.

They're our best customers today. They are the ones who buy the most. They are the ones who have been buying from us the longest.

Some of them do not hear much from us. And the ones who do, tend to talk to us when they call us.

Few proactive calls are made from us to them, because we are busy tending to the squeaky-wheel complainer customers.

Many of our best customers buy from us on autopilot. And we sell to them that way, too: they ask, we sell. Very rarely do we explore what they really need. And what they buy elsewhere. And what they're having trouble getting quoted. And what's on their wish list.

They've niched us, and we've niched them. “This is what I buy from them because this is what they have,” your customers think. “This is what I sell them because this is what they need,” you say about these customers.

We don't know how much of their total products and services they buy from us. We don't know what else they buy from others that they could buy from us.

We don't know much—because we don't talk to some of these customers much. And, amazingly, all they really know about us is what they automatically buy.

So, what do we do about this? First, we need to identify who these best customers are.

List your top 10 customers. Make sure you include ...