Most companies put a large chunk of their growth budget towards lead generation and getting new customers. It can be easy to let caring for existing customers become more of an afterthought.
If this is your current approach to growth, you’re missing out on an opportunity! There is potential in customer expansion that can drive a company’s growth to new heights. One method of developing your brand loyalty is to strengthen your current customer relations. If done successfully, doing so lets customers understand the value your team can continuously provide.
Another critical reason to invest in customer expansions is that an average of 70 to 80 percent of your company’s revenue comes from the renewal and upsells of existing customers. Sadly, most companies only invest 10 to 20 percent of their sales budgets in customer expansion. When you neglect customer expansion efforts, money is wasted as most of your sales and marketing budget is going to customer acquisition.
Failed Customer Conversations
When your company is overly engrossed in helping and supporting customers, you fail to see the chances of upselling products. Sometimes, even your account executives don’t know how to retain a customer who is about to cancel their subscription.
You might have had a similar experience where the customer representative didn’t attempt to change your mind about unsubscribing. Maybe they didn’t make you feel that their product offered the solution you needed. Left without a reason to stay, you probably unsubscribed.
It’s essential to train customer representatives who know how to identify such situations and put out the fire before it catches quickly. Your team should know how to win a contract renewal, upsell, or politely apologize for a failure. Your front lines with customers have a grave impact on your cash flow and can significantly reduce customer faith and loyalty if it continuously fails.
Help Your Current Customers See Your Value
Your current customer’s preference for not trying a different solution other than your primary service is the biggest threat in your business. Don’t worry; it’s a natural and humanlike occurrence. Make sure your customers always see the value that you’re giving them. You can take notes from the time they were still prospects and introduce them to their unconsidered needs.
Provocative messaging helps stir up the emotions of prospects with their current problems. You must take this sense of urgency as an excellent opportunity to sell! Do this with existing customers, and you’ll see a spike in renewals and upsells.
Customize Your Messaging for Customer Expansion
Due to a lack of budget, most companies try to cut down costs by recycling messages and content. However, research states that the psychology of a current customer is entirely different from a prospect. So the words you use to acquire new customers have a high chance to not work on existing customers during service renewal or upselling.
Your company needs to see current customers in a different light to take a different approach during customer expansion. You need to identify questions customers are throwing at you during critical moments. Then, answer those questions with sincere messages to boost loyalty and persuade them to take action. In a nutshell, you need to know how to anticipate customer decisions and make appropriate actions rooted in behavioral psychology.
Are you having difficulty reaching your sales goal? Do you need insight into your customer base? We can help. Get in touch with us today for a free consultation!
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We understand it can be difficult to know where to start when building a framework for sales conversations, so we’ve developed a Sales Conversation “Cheat Sheet” you can download HERE.