Are you letting go of your prodigal clients?

Posted On August 25, 2008 | Written by Emmanuel Oluwatosin

Are you finding it hard to meet your [tag]sales[/tag] target? Are you experiencing revenue loss? This may be sign that you have some prodigal clients which you are allowing to slip away? Prodigal clients are your inactive clients. They are those who have not patronised your services for quite some time. It may be ages that they last ordered from you and you might not even have noticed it. If you are really serious about increasing your revenue, then you need to take a look at this set of [tag]customers[/tag].

The easiest way to instantly increase your current client base is to regain your inactive clients. It is not only less costly to maintain existing clients, it is easier for you to introduce your new lines of products or services to them. They have purchased from you before and hence can make up their mind on time as regards subsequent orders. So, what do you do now?

You must identify how many of your old clients are no longer actively purchasing from your company. You will then go a step further by finding out why they cease to be your customers. Here are some reasons why some of your clients may have stopped buying from you:

  1. Something totally unrelated to you happened in their life that has caused them to stop dealing with you.
  2. They probably have every intention to start dealing with you again but just have not gotten around it yet.
  3. They experienced a problem during their last purchase.
  4. Your after-sales service is not helpful to them.
  5. They can no longer benefit from your product or service.

You can keep naming the reasons. You may need to call up some of these clients and find out from them. This will definitely benefit you. The best way to reinstate your lost clients is to simply contact them. Make an appointment to visit them or call them if a visit is not possible. You can also choose to send them a letter. Tell your lost clients that you noticed that they have not been buying from your company and that you sense that something is wrong. Make sure that you communicate both humility and concern. Remember to focus on them and their well-being.

If your client falls under category number one stated above, your call will awaken them into buying again. If your client falls into category number two, you must take the opportunity to tell them how much you value their business and apologize for the problem they encountered. Do something special to make up for the inconvenience they experienced. At the end of the day, you may not be able to win all your inactive clients back but you will surely have a clear understanding of how to keep your customers. And the end result? Your revenue will be on th increase.

8 Responses

  1. I completely agree with your article. The most efficient way of increasing revenue is through existing clients seeing as there’s a lower barrier to their purchasing from you again. It takes a lot more time and effort to woo new clientele and the chances of them employing your services is a lot lower. A healthy business is one that takes advantage of repeat custom.

  2. Absolutely correct. I run a web development firm, and i had a similar experience with one of my clients some time ago. It turned out he fell in category 4 above. After speaking to him i realized that he had actually started thinking about moving his business to another company.

    Lucky for me i had been “touched” to contact him and find out if he needed anything, since i hadn’t heard from him in a while. Morale of the story? Don’t always expect the client to come to you with problems. It is a good idea to check up on your clients once in a while, whenever possible.

    As you can imagine, i always do that now.

  3. Hello all,
    while we focus on getting new customers, I believe we would do our business a lot of good by satisfying existing customers too. One satisfied customers can bring 100s of others. This is definitely one of the cheapest means of getting customers if properly managed. So, before you launch that new marketing strategy, take a look at your existing customers and look for way of increasing their experiences of your services or products.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

You May Also Like