When sales fall, most businesses instinctively decide that the best course of action is to go after new customers.

While logically it’s a sensible call to make, the reality is there are three options available to counteract the fall:

• Increase the amount of customers i.e. get more customers,

• Increase the frequency of purchases of your existing customers, and/or

• Increase the average spend per purchase from your existing customers

However, research shows that it is eight times more expensive to try and get more customers than it is to get more sales from existing customers.

Look at it this way. It’s easier to sell a football shirt to a fan, than it is to someone who doesn’t care about football or, even worse, supports your rivals. You should be selling to your fans who, in this particular analogy, are your existing customers.

If you look at your existing customer base, as well as your current list of products and services, you will be able to identify opportunities to cross-sell to existing customers, as well as attracting new business. You can do this by creating a simple table, with existing and new customers/clients’ needs down the left hand side, and your products and services across the top.

This helps give you a visual representation of what and where you will be able to cross-sell. Simply tick off what you provide to each customer, and at a glance this table will show you where the opportunities to cross-sell or upsell new or existing services to your existing client base are.

In our experience this is often a quick win for clients to grow the business before going out into the market and looking for new customers or the extra resources that can entail.

You may wish to try it for your business.

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