Old Customers, Friends, Vendors

Old customers, friends, and vendors are a potential gold mine for your business sales. Traditional marketing strategy focuses almost entirely on finding new customers. This is based on reasoning that when you are starting out new customers are the only kind you have and, if you want to sustain a high growth strategy, new customers are required. In many businesses, customer retention, the care and feeding of old customers, is an operational afterthought. Nevertheless, over and over in my work with all types of companies, I am reminded of how valuable the people you already know are to your sales. Repeatedly clients have increased their sales by focusing their marketing strategy and a significant portion of their marketing efforts on maintaining current customers and rekindling old customer relationships.  Continue reading →