Should You Focus On New Business or Current Clients???

At the end of speeches I often offer people in the audience the opportunity to make an appointment to buy me breakfast so they can pick my brain for an hour. For the price of an omelet you get an hour of “free” consulting. (Hey, it’s a good deal!) At these breakfasts I get asked lots of different types of questions (some are surprisingly personal) but the majority have to do with, “How do I sell more stuff and earn more money?” A while back I had breakfast with a local businessperson lady and one of her questions is a question I get quite often – “Jeff, I can spend my time developing new business or mining my old customers for more business. Which one should I concentrate on?” I get this one so often that I thought you might be interested in the answer (though you might not be happy with it).

For most of us, we need to do both. I know, I know, there aren’t enough hours in the day to do everything you need to do. (Yes, I can hear you whining) Welcome to the world of professional sales. There are never enough hours to do all the things you need to do but prospecting for business (finding new biz or biz from old customers) is crucial. In fact, I could easily argue that it’s the most important thing you can do on a daily basis. A full pipeline of appointments solves a lot of problems.

New prospects or existing customers? Well, it’s harder to get appointments with new prospects and harder to sell them than it is to get appointments and sell to people who have already used your product of service, but you need to do both because concentrating on one to the exclusion of the other can be a recipe for disaster. If you only focus on existing customers they’ll probably feel the love and become more loyal over time but there are many situations that can occur where, through no fault of your own, an existing customer takes their business somewhere else. Mergers, acquisitions, downsizing and a million other reasons for key personnel changing can result in your contact no longer being your contact at a company you’re doing business with. Or what about this one? “Jeff, it looks like we won’t be able to use you anymore. The owner of the company just got married and his new brother-in-law is a sales trainer. We love you but…” Perhaps you need to only do a little prospecting for new business and invest most of your time getting business from existing customers but the rep who does no new business development is doomed to eventual extinction. The reverse is also true, if you spend all your time developing new business and don’t pay attention to your current customers I can promise you that your competition will. They’re waiting in the wings right now, rubbing their hands gleefully as they anticipate your client becoming their client because your client feels neglected. Everyone wants to be loved so it’s just as important to let your current clients know how much you appreciate their ongoing business while at the same time dangling your hook in the water for some new customers.

What’s the mix? How much time should you spend on new biz development as opposed to servicing and getting more business from existing clients? I don’t know but it’s something you should give serious thought to. There’s no magic formula. If you have three huge clients that account for all of your annual business you’d be crazy to not devote most of your time to keeping them happy but you should still do at least a little new business prospecting regularly. If you’re in a highly transactional business you might need to invest the vast majority of your time in developing new clients, but don’t ignore the current customer base. Even if they aren’t ready to buy again they can be a great source of referrals, but not if you aren’t in contact with them.

Look for reasons to call, visit, email, IM, DM, and in general stay in touch with existing customers while at the same time developing a stable of new clients. Both of these wells can run deep and by dipping your bucket in both you’ll make sure that you’re never “sales thirsty.”