How to find a steady flow of loyal customers

All print companies want to know to discover and attract new clients to their business. Nick Devine, founder and publisher of The Print Coach, explains how you can find a steady flow of loyal customers in order to help increase profit.

New business is truly the lifeblood of your company. When you know how to bring a steady flow of new accounts into your business, then you are in control of both your sales and marketing. You have the resources to invest so you can grow, and the more good quality accounts that you have, the easier it is to attract additional ones like them.

Companies who have no predictable system for attracting good quality and new accounts will always struggle. They will have constant financial difficulties, people problems and growth challenges.

In this article, we will look at the most powerful three-part selling system that I have used in 28 years of in-the-trenches sales experience—which I call the ‘Precision Marketing System’. First, let us look at each part of the system separately and you will quickly begin to see why it is so effective.

Attract more ideal clients

Did you know that if you analysed your customers in Excel and looked at how much each one actually spends, it is fascinating what you would discover. Only 20 percent of your customers are contributing to 80 percent of your revenue—most people know this concept (80/20 rule) but many are not using it in their business.

However, I found a much more interesting discovery which I call the 5/50 and 50/5 rule. 5 percent of your customers account for 50 percent of your revenue, and the bottom 50 percent of your customers are contributing to just 5 percent of your revenue. Think about that for a moment—that really is amazing.

Now, there is the really important question: When you are investing valuable resources looking for new business, which kind of accounts do you actually want? Do you want more like the top 5 percent, or do you want more that are like the bottom 50 percent? For most of us the answer is clear, we want more customers like our current best customers. And in order for that to happen, you need to get very clear about who you are targeting—you cannot afford to be haphazard about this. 

Years ago, I sold trading systems to UK stockbrokers. I knew nothing about this sector or the technology for it, yet a year later I had managed to outsell a complete team of five other salespeople, and I did it because I invested most of my time selling to ideal clients—this may be simple, but also very effective at the same time.

The action step to begin this part is creating a printed list of prospects that would be a good fit for the products and services that your company sells. Then take a look at the characteristics of your top 20 percent or current customers for clues of what you can aim for.

Difference maker

Imagine that you are sitting outside the office of your ideal prospect and you are about to go in for a meeting. They are in the market for what you sell and they are also a good match for the products and services that your company offers. But, you have also been told that two of your competitors are bidding for this business as well—meaning that you will additionally have to differentiate what you do from your competitors. What will you say to your prospect now in order to gain their business?

Here is what your competition are likely to say, which I call the ‘forgettable four’: excellent quality, reliable delivery, competitive prices and superior customer service. Unfortunately, what the customer actually hears is ‘another good printer, I wonder how cheap the price is?’. The forgettable four do allow you to play in the game and, when done extraordinarily well, they give you a certain advantage. But you also need something more to offer, which is called your ‘difference maker’.

This is what really differentiates you from your competitors in the mind of your prospects. It is often not an easy thing to figure out, but at the same time is probably the most important question you need to answer in your company. Why should a customer buy from you, rather than from your competitors? If you do not give them a good answer, then they will instead default to buying on the lowest common denominator—which of course is price.

The action step for this point is to consider three key question areas to start. Firstly, what problems are you solving for the customer? Will you be helping them achieve a business objective, be more efficient or have less problems in a certain area? Secondly, consider what promises you can make to your prospect that would help get them really excited? Would you also be able to guarantee that? Finally, think about what proof you can offer that you can actually deliver on the promises you had made—do you have any case studies or testimonials from other good quality customers that prove you can do what you actually said you could?

Optimised customer acquisition

This third step is actually quite easy and is more about relentless execution than anything else. Having completed steps one and two, you can design some mail pieces that focus on both your difference maker and your ideal client.

You might start with six mailing pieces, which could be a combination of postcards, emails and letters.—with each one focusing on a specific aspect of your difference maker. Using myself as an example, my ‘difference maker’ is turning printers into profit leaders. So, I could in turn break that down into different mailing prices focused on new business development, sales management, account development and so on.

Once you have all of those in place, and you sent them out in a cycle—for example, every two weeks—then you need to ensue that each mailing piece is followed up by a phone call. If you do not carry out this phone call, you will lose about 90 percent of the effectiveness of the campaign.

The process is very simple: mail, phone, mail, phone, mail and so on. You must ensure that you mail enough so that you can keep up with the phone calls the following week.

The action step here is to firstly design a series of mail campaigns focused on a combination of your ideal client and your difference maker.

In our next article, I will reveal some simple and practical actions you can take to convert more estimates into orders—all without sacrificing your margins.