Spring is finally in the air with daffodils blooming and sunshine peeking through the clouds. All signals of renewal, change and something new happening. Exciting news from Leapfrog HQ is that we have launched two new training courses; Successful Project and Account Management and Driving Organic Growth.
Sales, as we all know, isn’t all about finding new business. In fact, you can derive significant growth from developing and renewing relationships with existing customers, hence the creation of a Driving Organic Growth training course!
Top Tips – Do you have an 80 / 20 Split?
Many years ago, 1896 to be precise, Vilfredo Pareto an Italian economist noted that 80% of land was owned by 20% of landowners and so Pareto’s 80/20 principle was created.
- Is the 80/20 rule true for your business? Does 80% of your revenue come from 20% of your clients? Understanding the breakdown is imperative as new customer acquisition is much more expensive than building business with an existing client. Work out your ratio. There is insight to be had from this formula – whether you find that you are over reliant on too few clients for a significant proportion of your revenue or from having a wide pool of clients that only work with you once and deliver limited revenue.
- What plans, if any, do you have in place to retain and renew business with existing clients? As I said above given the expense and time it takes to win new customers in the first place surely it is worth thinking and planning as to how you should keep them on board and how you might be able to get them to work with you again.
- It is in the nature of business and sales that occasionally clients will stop working with you. Our recommendation is therefore to analyse the profile of your key clients. Once you understand what a ‘key’ client looks like you can assess which other customers have the potential to do more work with you? Leapfrog can work with you to create this key client profile. We can then help you to identify whether there are customers with irregular purchase habits that fit a similar profile to the big spenders and then more importantly create a plan with you to target those look-a-likes who in theory could have the potential to work with you again.
- We would also urge you to think about what makes a great commercial partnership for your business. Who do you want to work with regularly? It is all very well if your customer delivers significant revenue but how does this client treat your staff and are they worth the effort? Can you grow old together? Are they a treasured partnership? Sometimes it is more important to walk away from a profitable but toxic relationship than stay and have a miserable time!
- Finally, how much do you know and understand about your key clients? You can’t expect to generate additional revenue from them if you don’t make any effort to understand them their market and what’s going on with their business. We can work with you to help identity what’s important in this understanding and then what the implications are for you moving forward.
We have just run the Driving Organic Growth training course for a well respected PR agency, Liz Male Consulting, and this is what the MD, Liz Male, had to say about the workshop. “This was an excellent day for the whole team to be involved in working ON the business, not just IN the business. It made clear the potential opportunites and valuable roles everyone has to play in growing the business.”
We would also love to help you or your team create practical growth plans for your exsiting client base so please do contact us to discuss how we can help.
