Selling More to Existing Customers – Increased Share of Wallet
Selling more to existing customers is easy when you know what your customers want from the relationship.
Step 1
Make a list of your most important customers (see Chapter 8 for help with this). This will be formed by a combination of revenue, profit and potential.
Step 2
Ask each Key Account Manager (KAM) to put a percentage penetration (or “share of wallet”) figure against each customer. This is “How much of the customer’s available spend to we currently get – that we want”.
Step 3
Ask the KAMs to identify who should be included in your customer satisfaction survey. You might have several contacts at each customer. (One of our clients includes 35 contacts at just one customer – they are all either decision-makers or key-influencers and are located at plants around the world.) It’s up to you to make sure you don’t miss out anyone who is important.
Step 4
Choose which questions and statements you want to use in your InfoQuest B2B customer satisfaction survey from our library (or ask us to help you to create new, business-specific questions and statements). These should cover all the important touch-points and include soft measures such as ‘the Key Account Manager understands my business needs’.
Step 5
Let InfoQuest, the market leader in B2B customer satisfaction surveys, run the survey. We achieve an average worldwide response rate of just over 70% for our clients, based on posing up to 60 questions and statements in the InfoQuest box – plus the two open questions on the folded-up supplemental information form. And we tell you exactly who said what.
Step 6
Go through the feedback and create bespoke action plans for each customer.
The individual response sheets (above) show precisely how each person responded to each and every question and statement. Just as each customer is different because of their circumstances, market, culture and objectives, so too are each of the people you’ve chosen to survey within the customer’s organisation. They have personal goals and political pressures. And, because in a business-to-business environment ‘people buy from people’, the all-important relationships between Key Account Managers and their contacts can be audited and managed. Most InfoQuest surveys will identify personality clashes which, when dealt with (usually by simply swapping an account from one KAM to another) open up the opportunities to sell more. The individual response sheets show the ON / OFF switches. Turn all the switches ON and the relationship will be the best it possibly can.
Step 7
Close the circle. Cash the cheque. The relationship is good and getting better. The customer loves you. Price is not so much of an issue because they recognise the value that your business brings to their business. They’re giving you all of their available jobs. There are references and referrals and case-studies to be had. And the enjoyment that comes with a Totally Satisfied Customer.
