How To Increase Customer Spending With Your Company

"If only the customers I have bought more," screamed a client that afternoon, "it not that we don't have enough, customers just aren't buying their share." It seems the more they spend on increasing customer transaction size, the less this client made from a sale. More marketing wasn't helping, so how can they increase customer spending?

In competitive business-to-business markets, you will reach a point where a limited number of customers are buying a finite amount of what you offer from anyone in the market. As more competitors enter the market place this share of customer is further diluted. Some would say this is a matter of economics, but don't be fooled, it's a factor of customer loyalty and your ability to serve customers.

Why do some companies in your same industry grow as competition strengthens while others buckle under the stress? The secret isn't diversification, nor extending product lines, or even discounting. Instead, you keep customers buying from you in greater volumes by following these observations:

1. Transaction volume is a measure of capacity to buy against what actually is purchased. If customers aren't buying volume from anyone, they can't start buying it from you.
2. Cross selling at customer interaction points gives customers more opportunities to buy those things they need. Balance interaction point selling with customer education.
3. Better needs assessments helps you offer the right level of solution the first time, so you don't miss anything they might buy later from someone else.
4. Up selling to higher-grade services at contract close, this requires better sales skills; a certain percentage of your customer base will always buy the premium product.
5. Reduce your costs per sale or transaction to increase profits without changing buying volume; this is necessary when facing heavy competition.
6. Improve the closing ration of your sales team to turn more leads into customers. This increases the number of customers and revenues without increasing selling costs.
7. Use a Product / Accessory Matrix to match optional components to specific client needs at point of sale. Make it easy to provide a full and complete solution every time.
8. Share what other customers in similar situations bought when they purchased what this customer is considering; this sparks ideas about what needs to be purchased in this transaction.
9. Demonstrate a strong return on investment throughout the sales and fulfillment processes; use evaluation meetings, facts, and other customer directed measures that show your value.
10. Give away unprofitable customers focusing your efforts on those who can afford to buy more. Reducing drains on profits increases capital available to drive new prospects.

These observations, based on years of experience and actual management, are multidimensional in nature. They require sales to work with marketing, marketing to work with accounting, and everyone to work with the services department.

After a full consultation, my client discovered that he didn't want customers to buy more; he wanted customers to be more profitable. Remember, you have a limited production capacity to serve any increases in demand, but an unlimited ability to demonstrate value in your market place.

You can create more profits selling less with fewer customers, even in highly competitive industrial and high-tech markets. It doesn't matter if you are a little guy, or a big corporation, whether you have 1 or 1,000 competitors in your market -- with customer relationships your buyers will choose you over anyone else, so approach these observations with open armed consideration.