Sales is, of course, all about selling. It’s striking, however, that most companies focus more on selling to new customers than to existing ones. While it’s actually much easier, cheaper, and more profitable to sell more to existing customers than to new ones, making your business more profitable. But how do you actually approach that? And how do you foster customer loyalty?
Don Peppers and Dr. Martha Rogers wrote several practical and readable books on One-to-One marketing, an elaboration of CRM or Customer Relationship Management, back in the 1990s. And for those who primarily think of CRM as IT solutions: CRM is about sales and marketing. Software is a tool, nothing more.
But you’ll always need new customers. So the question is: how do you acquire new customers more easily and cheaply, while also earning you money? Do you actually know how much you’re making from each customer? And what should you do with customers you might be losing money on? Should you let them go or take action to ensure they’re no longer loss-making?
It’s not rocket science, but you do need to know how and what to do—and, more importantly, what not to do…
For many entrepreneurs, marketing is synonymous with advertising, but that’s only a small part. It starts with the well-known 4 Ps: Product, Price, Place, and Promotion. Promotion refers to all forms of advertising and sales promotion, including the P for positioning and, of course, the use of social media. What determines the price? And where and how do you sell your products? The P for Place?
It’s important to approach all these components in a structured manner and ensure they align with each other, so you can develop a clear policy. This provides structure and guidance not only for yourself, but for everyone in your company. First, conduct a SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) of your company and use that to inform your (commercial) policy. And when you’re going to advertise, remember: the more targeted your advertising, the more effective it will be.
Sales must then work with the results from Marketing, where sales can teach you a lot about what to look out for.
And if you think that “Big Data” offers the solution to all your problems, rest assured: by making good use of the data you already have, you can usually do much more than you think!
