Customer Base—Your Half-squeezed Lemons?

How long has it been since you “squeezed” your Customer base?

If you’ve ever tried to pick fruit from a lemon tree you know how prickly, even slightly dangerous that can be!  Anyone who has ever tried to deprive it of its fruit soon discovered it has thorns.

Like the lemon tree, business prospects can be very self-protective and obstinate, when you’re trying to get their business.

Picking the Fruit

For those whose job it is to “pick the fruit” for your business—cold calling prospects can sometimes be very discouraging. However, in order to claim the fruit, someone is going to have to climb that tree!

Prospects are NOT fruit-in-the-hand, ready to be turned into “lemonade!”  Even trying to squeeze juice from newly-picked fruit can take a lot of work, just like on-boarding new customers.

Now, think of your customer base (your list of past and current customers) as fruit or “lemons” already in your hand and ready for squeezing.

Harvesting an existing customer base

it’s more cost effective to glean more business from your existing customer base, than continually marketing to find new customers.  The cost of sales can be pretty daunting for some small businesses. And with ever-changing technology, many prospects avoid contact in-person or by phone. Developing relationships with new customers is more of a challenge than ever before.

It’s easy to give up on past contacts, thinking there’s no more “lemonade” to be made there.  But, before you throw out what you thought were well-squeezed lemons, I suggest you start squeezing and keep squeezing!

Engage your staff to help with improving and creating systems (tools) that ensure you are getting every last drop of business you can produce, cost effectively.

Systems for making more “lemonade”

If you’re like me, and you don’t like WASTE, you want to make more lemonade with less lemons!  Here’s what I highly recommend…

Automatic email responders on new orders, and good CRM software. Employ Service Control Checklists that prompt your Sales and Marketing team to email, call or visit your ENTIRE customer database with regularity.

I could go on and on here, but I think you get the picture.  Without a good system for harvesting, you will not get all the juice from the fruit, which could mean success or failure for your business.

Start squeezing today!

Did I mention?  Great systems work!