Don’t miss what’s right under your nose

Loads of people that I work with spend a huge amount of time, effort and money trying to find new customers. When I meet with them, the questions are often about winning new custom, finding new shops and galleries, getting more visitors to websites and more fans and followers hooked up on their social media platforms.

That’s all great, and to be honest I’d be worried if those questions were not being asked, or new business not being feverishly pursued.

My observation is this. Whilst all this is going on, are opportunities being missed that are much closer to home? New business which might, in fact, be much cheaper to acquire and involve much less effort?

I am, of course, talking about getting new business from existing customers. The 80:20 rule says that over the lifetime of your business, 80% of your turnover will come from just 20% of your lifetime customers — from repeat business, from upselling, from listening carefully to what they are saying to you about their needs.

What are the key questions you could be asking?

• Would you like more of the same?

( I accidentally delivered twice as many books to a prominent gallery as they had asked for. When I rang to arrange to pick up the extras, they said – don’t worry – just invoice us for the whole lot. Lesson learned. They now order larger quantities and I give them a little extra discount in return.)

• Would you like any variations — of pattern, colour, size? Have customers asked about this, or made suggestions?
• Have people asked if anything less expensive is available?
• Can I make or do something that’s exclusive to you?

You can see where I’m going with this, so I won’t labour the point. But if you don’t ask….

Drop pebbles in the pond.

How regularly do you stay in touch with existing (and past) customers? Just because someone hasn’t ordered in while doesn’t mean you are forgotten. Some of the best contracts I’ve won have come from people that I haven’t worked for in years.

Use your email newsletters effectively keep the contact going — you never know when someone might get back in touch again. Keep it friendly. There’s a companion post on this blog — Don’t Sell – Make Friends, that explores this topic in a bit more detail.

Ask for referrals — people who are fans of your work will often be really willing to share their ideas about other places or people you should be targeting — and a good referral in the form of an introduction or personal recommendation is worth it’s weight in gold.

Take time out to do a bit of analysis.

It pays to take a little time to think this stuff through. There’s a really handy tool you can use – I’m sharing it here for free because it’s just a really cool thing to try. Just follow this link to Ansoff’s analysis. Do it yourself, or work with on it another creative business person.

Pete writes and blogs extensively about the business of creativity — drawing on thirty years of experience of working in the creative sector “where creativity, self-fulfillment and creative business meet”. Pete draws the illustrations for his own stories.

His first book – ‘Make Your Creativity Pay’, was published in July 2011. His second – ‘The Art of Shouting Quietly – a guide to self-promotion for introverts and other quiet souls’, will be released at the end of 2014.

You can follow Pete on Twitter @petemosley