Pick Up The Phone and Sell

CHAPTER 30CALL CUSTOMERS WHO USED TO BUY FROM YOU, BUT STOPPED

This chapter is about making proactive calls to your ex-customers.

These are not people who have moved a product or two away from you or shifted to a competitor on a single service that you offer.

These folks have left you for the competition.

They may not be happy with the competition, but they're buying from them, not from you.

These calls are about inviting them back.

ABOUT THIS GROUP OF CUSTOMERS

These customers bought from you for a long time.

Then perhaps there was a problem.

Or maybe they had a difficult experience that didn't sit well with them. Mistakes happen. You're human, and so are your colleagues, and frankly, nobody expects you to be perfect. But customers expect you to make it right, and perhaps something happened that didn't go so smoothly.

But maybe not.

Maybe the competition simply reached out and offered cheaper pricing.

You know the competition – happy to undercut, happy to trim their margin to razor-thin levels, often damaging the entire industry in the process.

So, now, these customers buy elsewhere.

They may have left months ago, or years ago.

It's never too late to call them and tell them you'd like to help them again.

How to Identify These Customers

This is a challenging group of customers to list, because sometimes we don't even know they've gone away from us.

So look in your CRM system, which lists your customers and prospects.

Also, go into your quote log and invoices.

And your emails. ...