| Ask the Sales Doctor |
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| This is a weekly column transcribed from my Radio Show. "Ask the Sales Doctor" is the segment of the show in which I answer questions sent in by listeners. Send in your questions by mail, email, fax or phone. If I pick yours to be "Question of the Week", you'll win an autographed copy of my best-selling book, The Six Steps to Excellence in Selling. |
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Karl from Atlanta, Georgia writes:
"Is it OK to call my current customers over and over again to offer them new ideas and products? Sometimes I feel like I'm wearing out my welcome and should focus on new accounts instead."
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Warren answers:
 This is one of these questions that I could not have created if I tried, but it's something that every single salesperson faces. Karl, I'm so happy you sent it in this week. Here's what the deal is. The answer to your question is yes. Obviously, you should be calling on new accounts. There's no doubt that the lifeblood of being successful in sales is making sure you have a really strong and consistent flow of new customers for your business. So it goes without saying that you ought to focus on new accounts. However, it's not new accounts instead; it's new accounts in addition to my current accounts. So yes, you're right. You ought to be thinking about new accounts.
Now, let's go back to the main crux of your question. You call on your current customers. You call them over and over again. You're introducing new ideas. And you're wondering of you're wearing out your welcome. Well, let me tell you something. It's OK to go back to your current customers and offer them new products and services. I have done a lot of research on this, Karl. What I've found is that just about 85% of our customers are so happy with what we do for them that they would either buy additional products and services from us or they would refer someone to us whom they know whom we don't know. Only 11% of those people are ever asked that question. And then 68% of the time when people change suppliers, when they stop doing business with us and move onto working with one of our competitors, it's because of what they would call perceived indifference. "My vendor doesn't call me as much anymore. My supplier seems not to be as interested in my business anymore." Etc., etc., etc. So the 85-11-68 rule - which by the way is Warren Wechsler's 85-11-68 rule. I invented it; I own it; it's my rule. Anyway, the whole point behind that is yes, you have to be calling your current customers. They want to know what's new. They want to know what's up.
OK, are you wearing out your welcome? I have to answer that question with a question. Have they told you that you're wearing out your welcome? Are they saying, "Gee whiz, Karl. Call me next week. You really don't have to call me every week." Or "You don't have to call me every month. Try every other month." Or, Karl, when you offer these new products and services, are they buying them from you? If the answer is that they're buying, then obviously you're not wearing out your welcome.
Maybe this is what's really behind your question. Are you facing the law of diminishing returns, where you're calling your customers over and over again, and you're finding out they're buying less and less, or picking up fewer and fewer new ideas? If that's the case, then maybe your intuition is telling you you're wearing out your welcome. I don't think so. I think as long as they're listening to you and they're accepting your ideas, and sometimes they buy and sometimes they don't, then I think you've got the appropriate blend of calling your current customers.
If you had a route-selling type business and you were selling potato chips, and you were selling Frito-Lay potato chips, and every week you came back and replenished the stock for potato chips. And then pretty soon you introduced taco chips, and after that you introduced corn chips. That would be the same type of thing. "Here I am again. Do you want to have some corn chips? Do you want some potato chips? Do you want some barbecue chips?" It would be offering the new products and services to your same clients over and over again for years. So I don't have any problem with this at all. Thanks for the question, Karl.
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As a financial advisor I have to ask people some pretty nosy questions. This is easy to do after I've developed...
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– Warren
Wechsler |
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