Profile Your Best Customers To Get Better New Customers

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Profile Your Best Customers To Get Better New Customers

One of the best ways to effectively increase your customer base is to target companies that have characteristics similar to your better existing customers.

The first step in this process is to determine who your best customers are. Don't go by instinct. You may have a big company or one with a high profile name. That doesn't necessarily mean it is your best customer. Look at your whole customer list, then study a year's worth of invoices to see where you made your most money. This group should be about 30-50% of your customer base.

Once you've decided who your best customers are, the next step is to understand why they like working with you. This process is called profiling. Essentially, you should interview their buyers, managers or any other key people you do business with in a particular company in order to find out: 1. What attracted them to your company, and 2. Why they continue working with you.

Talk to your individual salespeople who call on these customers, and gather similar information from their perspective.

Next, examine the customer files and determine what other factors your best customers might have in common. It could be something as simple as geography or the type of company or industry they work in (i.e. software designers, manufacturers, retail, etc.). Finally, figure out how they started working with you. Was it a sales letter? Personal visits? Networking? Your web site? All this is important, because these common factors will help you determine what new prospects to target and how to approach them.

Once you've gathered all this information, you or your sales reps are ready to go after new customers. Buy prospect lists built around the common factors you decided were most relevant, and begin sending those sales letters containing proven messages. If networking was a determining factor, join two or three more associations within your customers' industries and get out there and network. If your web site brought in a large portion of your best customers, send out direct mail that brings more visitors to your site.

Happy - and successful - prospecting.