Upselling & Cross-Selling Training Yuma AZ

True, going after new customers is an exciting part of being in business. There’s the motivation of identifying a new target, the thrill of the chase, and the satisfaction of the close.

But the reality is that your startup business likely will get more mileage out of optimizing your relationships with existing customers – even if there are just a few of them – than from using those same resources of time and money looking for potential new customers.

“The conventional wisdom says that it costs six times more for a business to acquire a new customer than it does to sell something else to an existing customer,” says Chet Holmes, a California-based sales consultant. “I’d say it might even cost more than that.”

The first step in turning existing customers into more revenue and higher profit-generators is getting to know them better. In the first part of a two-part article, we provide advice for expanding your understanding of the customers you thought you already knew.

Really get to know your customers

The way to most effectively cross-sell and up-sell existing customers is to convince them that you can improve their results because you know them intimately. This means you have to get to know your customers as well as you know your own company.

“Listen to what they say and don’t say,” says Erika Oliver, a business trainer and author in Kalamazoo, Mich. “Become well versed in the challenges and opportunities in their business. Interact with them in their space, s...

Copyright 2009 StartupNation, LLC

Click here to read more from StartupNation