How to sell to existing customers

For B2B services companies (e.g. software development, industrial automation)

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Everyone gets all excited about new customers, and yes, new customers are great.

But, if CLV (Customer Lifetime Value) is fundamental to the health of your business, then you really want to give your existing customers the attention they deserve as well.

You’ve worked hard to acquire your customers. It’s generally considered significantly easier to keep doing work for an existing customer than it is to find new customers (see https://hbr.org/2014/10/the-value-of-keeping-the-right-customers).

So why aren’t you actively pursuing your existing customers? No, not all of them. Just your favorites.

Selling to existing customers does not mean that you should push on a rope. You’re not going to invent a need that doesn’t exist.

However, you can get curious to uncover needs that you didn’t know your customer had. You can even uncover needs that your customer didn’t know they had (though this is harder).

Four necessary but insufficient conditions to actively sell to your existing customers:

  1. They have to have a need that you can satisfy.
  2. They have to want more help.
  3. They have to trust you can do it.
  4. They have to be aware that you can / want to help.

There’s a lot packed into these conditions. Let’s dig into each one.

How do I get a handle on whether or not my existing customer has an actual need?

You’re going to have to engage them in a discussion.

Caution flag: there’s a good chance they may not have a need right now.

Why?

Because you’re outbound. You’re running asynchronous to their timing.

Having said that, here are a few potential indicators that they may have a near-term need (before you initiate a conversation):

  1. They had mentioned a need that was put off due to higher priorities at the time. Is this the right time to address it?
  2. You know their business is booming. What new opportunities or stresses has this created?
  3. You previously observed a way that you could help them that they aren’t aware of.
  4. They just lost an internal resource that handled something you can help with.

To get a better sense of their need, you need to have the right conversation(s) with the right people.

Only you know who the right people are. There’s a decent chance it’s not the people you already work with (although they may be the right people to start with, and they can likely facilitate).

The overall question you need to answer for yourself is: will they ever have a need for the ways in which you can help? And by “ever”, I mean within the next ~2-3 years. If it’s further out than that, you may as well turn your attention to other customers because so much can change in that timeframe.

Some topics to cover when you do connect with the right people:

  1. What have they done in the past?
  2. What’s worked?
  3. What hasn’t worked?
  4. Is this need growing / shrinking / staying steady for the foreseeable?
  5. What would be most helpful (“If only I could….”)?
  6. Are there internal resources? If so, who manages them? Do they get overloaded? How often? What would complement this group best?
  7. Is there an incumbent? Are they liked?
  8. Who else needs to be bought in?

How do I get a sense of whether my customer wants more help?

Maybe one of the team members from your customer’s company just doesn’t like one of your team members. Could be something as simple as a personality mismatch. This may not be a huge issue, but if that person is in a position to be a blocker, this will get dicey quick.

Another example of where they may just not want your help is if they’ve already got a service provider like you that they’re happy enough with.

If you think you’re just going to walk in and dislodge an incumbent, even if you believe you’re a somewhat better fit, you may struggle.

People tend to lean toward the “if it ain’t broke…” way of thinking, especially when they’ve already got too much on their plate.

You need someone on your team that interacts with the customer regularly to ferret out whether or not there are any blockers in the customer account. This team member needs to have strong empathy, communication skills, and situational awareness to navigate the subtle and delicate politics of your customer.

How do I build trust with my existing customers?

Building trust is a long and nuanced topic. Here are a few things to consider:

  1. Execute on existing work. You might say “duh”, but it can be easy to get ahead of yourself if you sense a strong opportunity for long-term value. Be patient. Execute first, then grow. Slowly.
  2. Be flexible / adapt to the way they prefer to do business. You can’t always accommodate a customer’s preferences (especially if it breaks your business model), but if you listen carefully and pay attention, over time you’ll notice ways you can adapt a bit to their systems and their processes, becoming part of the team, as opposed to being viewed as a commodity.
  3. Consider bending over backwards, but don’t do it often. Carefully assess the situation. Make sure it’s clear to the customer that what you’re doing is an exception, not the norm (or they may start to expect this behavior from you).
  4. Be ready with content (e.g. case studies, landing pages, maybe articles) to share with the right people at the right time. This might not be necessary depending on your relationship with your existing customer, but you don’t want to be caught off guard and not have content to share.

How do I make my customer aware that we can (and want to) help?

This is where a lot of people might suggest turning to your email list.

I’m not a huge fan of the email marketing option, especially for smaller companies (less than 100 employees). Yes, it can scale nicely, but it’s such an impersonal approach.

You usually get out what you put into it.

If you’ve got an appropriate email list, then sure, some simple awareness building could be ok, but it’s not where I’d focus my energy.

A few thoughts on starting to build awareness:

  1. Create a small list of existing customers (~3-6 company sites) that are a really good fit for one of your services. These are your target accounts. The size of this list should vary a bit depending on the size of your organization and how aggressively you want to pursue active selling to your existing customers.
  2. Assign an account manager for each target account. You want this person to feel compelled to try to gain situational awareness and build relationships over a long period of time.
  3. There’s a good chance you’ll need to be introduced to new groups. Are you putting the right people in place that know how to expand their relationship network?
  4. Get curious. Seek to understand where you might add real value. Don’t expect to walk in and say you’d like to do more work with your customer and expect them to say, “ok, here you go.”.
  5. Make it clear that you actually want to do more work for them. Don’t assume they know this or are paying enough attention to you to recognize it. We’ve all got our own care-abouts.
  6. Be ready to share proof points (e.g. case studies) with them when the time is right.
  7. Have your project lead get more curious whenever they’re with the customer doing the work you already do for them. Ask questions like: “What’s that over there? I noticed….” or “Who’s in charge of …..?” or “How do you….?”.

Next steps

  1. Start experimenting. Start small. There’s no reason you can’t dip your toe in the water with one customer.
  2. Make sure you’re putting the right people in place.
  3. Start learning. There’s a lot out there on this topic. It falls within the realm of account-based engagement / account-based-selling / account-based marketing. Just make sure you’re focused on the existing customer aspects as opposed to the new customer aspects.
  4. Put feedback mechanisms in place to track progress.

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