How often do you see organisations totally focussed on bringing in new business to maintain their revenue?  Well, what about looking after your existing business.  We all know it’s more expensive to generate business than to keep existing business.

There are so many lead generation tools and techniques out there to build business. It’s easy to take our exisiting customers for granted. 

I spent many years in the corporate world helping big business generate new business.  So few of my projects focussed on looking after existing business.  Yet, we all know that it’s more cost effective to maintain business than generate new business.  No matter whether you’re in a small or large organisation or anything in between, the same principle applies.  And you can reap new business from your existing customer base.

So, how do you keep you existing business and use it to grow new business?  Easy - Look after them!  Here are some tips to ensure you keep your clients happy and encourage them to refer others to you……

1.  Acquire quality business.  This is very important  particularly if you have a home base network marketing business that relies building a team of business associates.  It’s all well and good to enrol lots and lots of people, but you need to support and train them and at the end of the day if they aren’t really motivated they won’t do well.  What’s the impact?  Bad press - AVOID it at all costs.  Just as you target your customer/client market, target your business associate market.

2. Talk to your new business after they come on board.  Making a sale doesn’t mean you can just ignore them!   Follow up, make sure they have what they need and understand that they need to familiarise themselves with what’s involved in dealing with you.  Where possible, introduce them to others and form a group of like-minded people who are positively attuned to their role in your business.   This can be informal or formal - whatever works.

3. Encourage referrals from existing business.  This can be done in many ways.  Incentives - cash, product, etc.   Satisfaction - if your existing customers/clients are happy they will tell others and you may not even need to incentivise them.  Events - invite your existing business to attend events and bring along others - offer an incentive.  Everyone likes to know what’s in it for them.  Most people don’t do things, including building your business, from the goodness of their heart, they need encouragement.  They must gain something from it - emotional or physical.

4. If your business has a defined timeframe for your customers/clients (eg education, timebound events), offer extensions or additional products/services.  Whatever it takes to keep existing business will usually be more cost effective than gaining new business.

Try these strategies and see if it improves your retention rate and generates new business.  There are no guarantees and for a home based business, advertising and other forms of business generation can be an expensive exercise.  Here’s an alternative.

Wishing you all the best.