Many business owners leave LOTSA money on the table by not addressing their existing clients’ unmet needs. Most don’t even know what they are because they never go looking for them. I’ve said for years that you’ll never have a client call and say, “Hey Boss, I got a pile of money here that I don’t know what to do with. You wouldn’t happen to have anything I can buy, would ya?” The big takeaway from Simon and Marie’s story is that they actually developed a strategy for their sales reps, set goals and executed. Imagine that: $820,000 in sales literally waiting to be closed. They’ve been in business for 24 YEARS. Imagine where they’d be today if they started doing this 23 years ago. Heck, 10 years ago.
Also, selling your clients additional services greatly contributes to retention and satisfaction. Clients who buy more ARE more loyal; and if you’re not bringing new services, products and ideas to your clients on a regular basis, intentionally looking for ways to deliver more value (and gain more profit), serve them better and increase their spend with you, someone else will. You are failing them in more ways than one. Most don’t do this because they grossly underestimate their clients’ willingness to spend and too narrowly define the business they are in, thereby limiting the value they could bring and profit they could gain from each client relationship. Some just believe that all their clients are cheapskates and the only way to cure that is to find better ones. Some are just lazy.
Here’s an exercise that will put some extra profit in your pocket: Make a spreadsheet with the names of every single client you have down one side, and all the potential products and services you could sell them across the top. Put an “X” in every box where they already buy from you. Create a plan to get an appointment with them to talk about all the other services where the “X” is missing. Will you close them all? Probably not. But you WILL pick up more business and discover a lot in the process of having those conversations.
