As any business owner will know, trying to get new, profitable clients through the door can be a time-consuming and costly exercise, especially if you are not using the right techniques.  There are prospects to find, relationships to build and trust to be earned and it all eats into your resources.  There is though, a quick win which doesn’t involve new clients, but past or existing ones.

Think for a moment about your existing customers.  Did they just come to you in their hour of need, find their solution and then disappear never to be seen or heard of again?  In many businesses, this is precisely what happens.  The business owner assumes that he has fulfilled the entire need as outlined, when in fact those clients could well be in the market for other of their services…if only they knew what those were.

The thing about existing clients is, of course, that you have already built a relationship with them.  You have established a track record and they already know and trust you, which makes it all the more likely that they will deal with you again.  When they do, their ability as a repeat customer to enhance your reputation becomes immense.  After all, who is going to use the same provider more than once unless they were absolutely satisfied first time around?

Another thing worth bearing in mind is that, having come to you with a particular problem that they needed to solve, they will be inclined to welcome further information, services or products which relate to their situation.  Having experienced their pain once, they will want to do everything possible to avoid it again in the future.

Fundamentally then, there are two things that you, the business owner, can do to increase the profitability of your existing clients.  First of all, you can make sure that they are aware of everything that you can do for them, and secondly you can keep in touch.  A well-timed call or e-mail to find out how things are going, especially when new prospects are looking rather thin on the ground, can be a quick source of revenue.  Regular newsletters which are relevant to the problems and issues faced by your clients are bound to be of interest and can also help to jolt past clients into taking action.

Of course, if you do anything to expand your range of services, or introduce tie-in products which are relevant to the needs of your target market, your existing clients could be every bit as interested as potential new ones.  If you decide to promote a special offer, this too can be extended to the people with whom you have done business in the past, perhaps encouraging them to try out different aspects of your service.

Clients who have received good service don’t want the hassle of having to start afresh with a new provider, any more than the provider wants to lose a good customer.  With just a little bit of thought, you can make your existing clients more profitable and discover a quick source of income to tide you over when things get tight.