win more from existing customers

Without a doubt, your most profitable revenue dollar is the one that comes from your customer base. Ultimately, if you do not drive enough revenue and profit from your customers, your new business marketing will become unaffordable and organizational death begins to occur.  Customers are your most valuable asset.  Selling to existing customers offers a much shorter sales cycle and a much higher close rate.  They are an attractive, warm target and can help you Finish 2013 Strong.

We would like to suggest then, that your customer sat survey is the most important campaign you will run all year. And, expanding your customer sat survey to reveal additional opportunity is one of our best ideas to make the customer sat campaign drive revenue.

Okay, I know you are thinking, we need to retain the good and honest character of a customer sat survey. And we agree…

We can’t ignore asking the traditional Customer Sat Survey Questions:

  • What is the customer’s satisfaction with our performance?
  • What did they like?
  • What did they feel could be improved?
  • What are we missing?
  • What differentiates your company from your competitors?

However, subtly, our recommendation is to go beyond the traditional questions and gather some key new intelligence that will build your opportunity funnel. Ask non traditional questions like these:

  • Ask how the customer is spending their budget today? ( Provide them with a list of items to choose from. This will tell you what share of their wallet you are getting.)
  • Ask them which of your new products they are interested in. (Show them the list… this reminds them of what you offer that they don’t use.)
  • Ask them to reveal their level of interest in each of your new products that you list for them.
  • Remind your customer how seriously you take your business and their satisfaction by having them interact with one of your key work processes. (Show them a process you do and what you measure for quality purposes. Ask them to tell you how well you are doing in each step.)
  • Ask your customer to estimate their spend with you in the coming year compared to the year they are in.

Other Great Ideas..
Have your president or high level person follow up with the survey person after the survey.
The customer sat survey is a great conversation starter.
Introduce a project based, short customer survey that is delivered immediately after the project is completed.
Focus the annual survey toward market research items.
Tailor your customer sat survey to the products and services they bought.

Final thoughts:
We believe the customer sat process is critical in remaining fully informed about your customers business and how they view you… and the opportunities ahead. Smart companies do this really well. We feel any time someone fills out a sat survey it is a gold mine of information about how people think. It always adds new insight… We are continually amazed at what we learn and where we can find gold in existing customer relationships.