According to our research, there are some pretty simple ways you can use to increase the number of sales you make to your existing customers. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel when it comes to selling to your existing customers. You can sell them more of what they love by implementing simple tactics.
As an entrepreneur, you always aim to sell more to your existing customers.
Sometimes you can find yourself in a position where you don’t know what to do. You risk losing some of your current customers if you continue with excessive pressure. On the other hand, if you don’t try to sell more, you will lose your business.
Because of that, sometimes, these activities can be very painful for entrepreneurs.
The solution to the problem is the proper balancing in your offerings with which you want to sell more.
Let’s see some possible ways to help you sell more to your existing customers without the risk of losing them.
Table of contents
- Why do You need to Sell More to Your Existing Customers?
- #1 Know Your Existing Customers
- #2 Make an Irresistible Offer
- #3 You are not a salesperson. You are an educator.
- #4 Recommend Additional Products and Services to Your Existing Customers
- #5 Give Them Free Samples of New Products
- #6 Don’t Forget to Thank Your Existing Customers, More Often
- #7 Be One of Them, Not Outsider
- #8 Help Them, Even if They Are Not Connected With Your Business
Why do You need to Sell More to Your Existing Customers?
It’s no secret that getting new customers is easy, but keeping them around is a challenge. You need to consistently give them good reasons to come back to your brand and make more purchases.
You might think that when it comes to sales and marketing, your job is done once you reach out to a new prospect. But what if your customer base is larger than you anticipated? Or what if you have an existing customer that wants to buy more of your product or service? In either case, you’ll likely be faced with the daunting task of trying to convince someone else to buy your stuff.
Existing customers are one of the best sources for repeat purchases. They already know your brand and are familiar with your products, so you need to sell them why you’re better than the competition and how your products and services are going to make their life easier.
Related: 30 Places to Find Prospects & Leads for Your Business
Selling more to existing customers is one of the most important strategies to improve sales. Still, the problem is that many people don’t really know how to sell more to their current customers. Selling to existing customers is different than selling to new prospects. Why? Because when you are selling to existing customers, they are already familiar with your product/service and will have some preconceived notions about it.
This article will give you eight simple yet powerful ways to sell more to your current customers. You’ll learn how to identify what types of customers are the best customers to focus on, how to sell more to your best customers, and what kinds of things you should avoid when selling to your best customers. Here are eight tried-and-true methods that’ll help you sell more to existing customers, no matter your business type.
#1 Know Your Existing Customers
Do you have enough knowledge about your existing customers? Do you know their names? Do you know when their birthday is? Do you know what they like and what they don’t like?
This is only a tiny part of the questions about your customers you will need to know.
Each company is in selling business. Furthermore, each company is in the marketing business. However, in today’s world, we can say, and we will not make a mistake, that every business is in the intelligence business. You want to know about your competition. You want to know about your existing and potential customers. You need that knowledge (intelligence) if you’re going to make the right decisions.
But, the question is about selling more to current customers, and if you want to sell them more, you need to know more about them. Everything else will be based on that knowledge.
Ultimately, it’s about building relationships with existing customers and then leveraging that relationship to increase your conversion rate. It’s about learning more about your current customers and finding ways to better communicate with them. It’s about selling more.
How Can You Learn More About Your Current Customers?
The first thing you can do is to ask them. You can ask your customers in person, or you can use surveys with open-ended questions to get all the necessary information about your customers.
If you are not sure what to ask, then you can use the following questions:
- What are your favorite products?
- Which products did you like the most?
- Did you find it easy to use?
- Do you think that it could be improved?
The best way is to send out the survey via email or call them on the phone. In the email, you can add a link to your website or social media profile and ask them to share the survey on their social network accounts.
You can also use social media tools to follow them and track their behavior if you want to learn more about your customers.
There are a lot of tools online that allow you to pull in data from your social media fans. So what can you do after you get the data? You can start with this question: what are the characteristics of my best customers?
You may be surprised to find out that they don’t have a whole lot in common. That’s because there are too many variables at play when you are talking about a business and its customers. The only way to really understand what your best customers have in common is to look at the variables that you can control. So what variables can you control? Everything that you are doing is something that you can control.
Develop Customer Personas for Each of Your Segments
When you’re trying to figure out what the most profitable customers are for your business, having customer personas is crucial. Customer personas are fictional characters based on real people. A persona represents a real person who has a particular set of problems, motivations, and personality traits.
By defining a persona, you can begin to see what problems you are solving and how the product or service you provide solves these problems. Customer personas help you determine whether your product or service appeals to your ideal customer, and if not, why not. Personas also help you understand what motivates your ideal customer to buy from you.
This is an important step in the customer journey map process. The persona must be based on real people, not just ideas or assumptions. You can use social media, competitor research, market research, customer feedback, surveys, or any other data source to develop the persona. A persona represents a real person who has a particular set of problems, motivations, and personality traits.
You want to learn more about these individuals, their needs, and how you can help them. And once you know all of this, you’ll be able to craft messaging that’s perfect for them and your business.
#2 Make an Irresistible Offer
The fundamental business law is that businesses offer something and customers decide if they need something from that offer.
If your offer to sell more is irresistible, you will succeed in selling more.
Think about it from the customer’s standpoint. Do you decide to buy something more if it will have real benefits for you, will solve real problems, or is it something you really desire? Probably, you will not refuse such an offer.
If you want to sell to your current customers, give them the reasons why they should buy more from you. Show how your products help them be better at their jobs or happier at home. But to do that, you must be very clear about your core message and what you stand for.
The trick here is to develop an offer that doesn’t just sound good but feels good as well. You don’t want your offer to seem like a simple, run-of-the-mill marketing pitch. Instead, make sure that you have something unique to offer consumers that sets your brand apart from the competition.
How to Develop an Irresistible Offer?
Irresistibility means that something is so desirable that it becomes hard to resist.
So, how can you develop an irresistible offer to sell more to your existing customers?
Here are some steps that will help you in this process:
- Find out what your customers want.
- Understand their needs.
- Find out what motivates them.
- Focus on solving their problems inside your offer.
- Think about the psychology behind their decision.
- Think about what you can offer that’s unique and valuable.
- Make it easy for customers to say yes.
- Be clear about your value proposition.
- Establish the “right” price.
- Remember, people make decisions when they’re scared. If your audience doesn’t feel the urge to buy your product, you’re not creating scarcity.
- Use emotion inside your offer.
- Close your offer with a call to action.
#3 You are not a salesperson. You are an educator.
Sometimes it is better not to try to sell but only to educate about what you want to sell.
Educate how you can solve different problems. Educate how you can help them. If you succeed in educating your existing customers, more sales will come.
Educating your audience on your offer is the most effective way to sell it. Education is the most powerful means of persuasion because you are communicating something your audience doesn’t already know.
For example, if you own a gym, what would you do to educate your current customers? Do you offer special education or a discount on their membership? Or perhaps you send them a newsletter. Whatever you do, make sure it’s educational. Educate people on the services you provide. Educate them about the quality of your products. Educate them about the benefits of your services.
Educating current customers is a great way to build trust with your brand. But the problem is that many businesses only do it sporadically, if ever. Instead of spending energy creating content, they’re spending it making sure customers can reach them when they need to. But your audience doesn’t have to wait. By adding your own voice into the mix, you can provide value to customers without them even realizing it.
#4 Recommend Additional Products and Services to Your Existing Customers
Why do you not try to recommend additional products or services while you are making a sale to existing customers?
You will not lose anything if you do so.
But, you need to recommend the real products for them. You need to know what will be most valuable for them while they are in buying mode.
Don’t try to sell something you don’t already know they need. This is a chance to offer products and services that will help them in their daily lives, solve a problem, or improve their life in some other way. By using the right products and services, you could give customers a reason to come back for new purchases again and again.
#5 Give Them Free Samples of New Products
You don’t put pressure. You only give them a free sample of your fresh product that they can try. If they like it, they will come to buy more.
This one requires a bit more creativity but can be very effective. The idea behind this is that if you give your customers a free sample of a new product, you create brand awareness in the process. By giving people something for free (and making them think they are getting something good), they may actually be willing to pay for it.
Give customers free samples, whether your product is food, clothing, or whatever else. By handing out samples, you can show customers how much they really need the product. Once they receive a sample, they will return for more.
#6 Don’t Forget to Thank Your Existing Customers, More Often
Always thank your existing customers. It doesn’t matter if they buy more or the same, or they didn’t buy anything. Thank them. If you show that they are essential to you, they will be faithful to you and your business.
You’ll always have loyal customers when you thank them.
Most entrepreneurs don’t realize that thanking your existing customers for coming back to you is crucial to maintaining a long-term relationship with your business. Many pieces of research show that when we thank people, we create a stronger bond, making them feel valued and cared for.
So if you’re not sending any kind of thank you, or if they’re generic, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity to keep customers loyal.
#7 Be One of Them, Not Outsider
The success of a business is based on the extent to which an entrepreneur can build a community around them. I will repeat, it’s community. There can’t be superiors and subordinates. There can’t be winners and losers.
The community exists because of people, human beings with shared values and interests.
If you want to sell more to your existing customers, make them a part of your community or simply become part of their community. You can’t lose anything. You can only increase your chance of success.
#8 Help Them, Even if They Are Not Connected With Your Business
Your business is there where it is only because of your existing customer. If they are not with you, then you will lose your business.
Your primary job is to help them, even if the help is not connected directly with your business and what you sell.
