An 8-Step Strategic Marketing Approach For New Business From Former Clients

How much of your marketing effort is dedicated to marketing and obtaining new clients or customers? Are you devoting your entire marketing effort to find new clients? Or are you using some strategic thinking and developing a strategy to get back in touch with former clients to gain new business from them? It has always intrigued me in my business coaching and business consulting practices that so many businesses give very little effort to or totally ignore past clients and customers that are no longer active.

Not keeping in touch with former clients and customers is very short-term thinking and definitely is not strategic thinking. Actually, former clients and customers can be the best source of new business for you. Remember, it costs anywhere from 2 to 40 times as much to acquire a new client or customer than to keep an existing client or customer. With this in mind, Your Strategic Thinking Business Coach offers the following 8 strategic steps to gain new business from your former clients and customers by building an effective contact program.

Strategic Step #1: Develop a list of all your former clients and customers, as well as centers of influence and other referral sources. This may mean sorting through old business cards, address lists in word processing files or old address books, etc, You should also put on that list the names and contact information of friends, colleagues, suppliers, professional associates, etc. The most important thing is to compile the list and then you can look at the list later to determine if any contacts should be deleted.

Strategic Step #2: Determine the message you want to deliver to the contacts on your list. You do not need a specific reason to contact them. It is legitimate to contact them to see how they are doing and to "just touch base" with them. When developing your message, you must incorporate what action you want the recipient of your message to take after receiving it.

Strategic Step #3: Determine the methods of contact to deliver your message. This will probably include: telephone calls, an email, or a letter. The key here is to be as personal as possible when you make the contacts. You will probably break your list into categories of method of contact.

Strategic Step #4: Determine the number of contacts you want to make and within what specified time period. Prioritization of your contact list is a strategic thinking move. You only have so much time, so use it wisely and strategically.
This may also cause you to do a "time-released" contact due to the needed follow-up after the contacts.

Strategic Step #5: Determine your "follow-up" plan. This will be dependent upon what action you have asked your contact to take after receiving your message. You must commit to making sure you do the follow-up contacts in a timely manner.

Strategic Step #6: Develop and implement a tracking program so you can evaluate the effectiveness of your client/customer contact program.

Strategic Step #7: Commit to continuous improvement in your client/customer contact program. Review your efforts on a regular basis and adjust your program as needed.

Strategic Step #8: Seek outside advice and assistance from a business coach or marketing consultant to gain additional insights and to be sure you hold yourself accountable in this effort.

Your strategic thinking business coach encourages you to fully realize the benefits of business coaching to strategically market and grow a profitable business. If you would like to learn more about how a strategic thinking business coach can facilitate and guide you in that endeavor, please contact Glenn Ebersole today through his website at http://www.businesscoach4u.com or by email at jgecoach@aol.com

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