Every business needs clients and the income they bring in order to not only sustain business, but to grow. But………….each client has a different value and how do you determine this “value?”
Firstly, you need to do a realistic assessment of the monetary value of the client to your organisation. Secondly, conduct a review of the cross selling opportunities. In the first case you should be assigning a value to you of the client: everyone instinctively knows that not all clients are profitable and that some are more profitable than others. Get the figures and study them, including maybe a “lifetime” projection. You should be reviewing administration time, the allocation of resources, travel, expenses incurred and maybe even the emotional time dedicated!
In the second case, I am talking about you and your colleagues co-operating in order to exploit the opportunities within a client organisation to the full. Getting more from an existing client is 10 times easier that winning a new client from scratch so do not make the assumption that the client knows exactly what other goods and services your business offers. Have you considered doing a client review?
In addition to the audit process to determine the value, one option for cross selling could be to run some sort of seminar with existing clients. The content of the seminar would need to be given serious thought, but selecting a relevant topic or possibly offering some training could work well. Both of these routes are ideal for maintaining visibility, for enhancing reputation and for giving the client something tangible to take away.
In my opinion, the glory days of a corporate jolly are long gone as clients usually want something tangible to justify giving up their time to a supplier!
Conferences and exhibitions might also be considered, but these are another story all together…..!!
