Do you know who your customers are?
“You need to know who your target customers are, but importantly, you need to know who your existing customers are!.” - Keith Grinsted
I always find it amusing when I ask one of my new small business customers who their ideal, or target, customers are.
They usually reel off a list of their existing customers!
So I then reply “OK, so those are the customers you stumbled upon or who dropped into your lap! But who are your ideal customers?”
This is usually followed by a scratching of heads when they realise they have never sat down and worked that out!
They are so focused on how good their product or service is they have never really worked out who they would ideally like to have as customers. Who are going toe be profitable customers.
What is worse is they don’t even know who their existing customers really are! They know they buy x, y, or z, products or services.
They know what they pay. And they know they pay their invoices.
But do they really know anything about the business? Who are the key people other than the buyer? What market are they in? How is their business? Is their business stagnant, growing, or contracting?
The likelihood is your sales person knows quite a bit but if they leave then you have no insight.
Imagine your biggest customer was Debenhams, Top Shop, or Wilco and you suddenly found out through social media they were going into administration.
You need to know who your target customers are, but importantly, you need to know who your existing customers are!
This is where having a CRM systems come in.
For those that don’t know, CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management. It is technology (don’t worry, a good one does it all for you!) used to manage interactions with customers and potential customers (suspects, prospects, customers).
A good CRM system helps you to build successful and engaging customer relationships. No longer is all the key information in your salesperson’s head. It is now in a resource that can be accessed by those in your business that need it and can act proactively upon it.
This enables you to streamline processes within your business enabling you to increase sales, improve customer service, and increase profitability.
By using a CRM system, particularly one now utilising all the benefits that AI (Artificial Intelligence) can bring, it is possible to take your business to a completely new levels you never dreamed of.
And it is of particular value to small businesses, lacking in resources, who now gain access to critical business information previously only available to large enterprises with analytics departments.
CRM will very quickly become a focal point of your strategic planning and will help you build the best possible engagement not only with your existing customers but also all those within your sales funnel. And it will help you build that sales funnel too.
Do give it some serious thought. Your biggest customer could be the next Wilko and you don’t even know it!
Keith Grinsted
MBA FRSA
Business SOS
