3 Ways You Can Sell To Your Existing Customers

by Kim Garmon Hummel

When your sales team closes a deal with a customer, it’s easy to think that’s the end of this buyer’s journey. The customer purchased what they wanted, and your sales team scored. Everybody wins, right? Time to move on to make a new customer!

In reality, sales teams are missing out on the chance to develop valuable relationships with existing customers by acting on this way of thinking. Customers who have a history with you are already aware of what you offer and the problem you solve. But that doesn’t mean it’s time for your sales team to switch to autopilot. There’s still work to be done.

Sales teams can reach existing customers by taking time to understand buyers as human and thinking empathetically about the selling process. If this sounds a lot like Inbound Marketing to you, you’d be right. It’s the foundation of building a customer-first approach that is focused on being human and helpful. Not surprisingly, people are much more likely to purchase (and repurchase) from a company that shapes the buying experience around the customer.

Cross-Selling vs. Upselling

After a customer makes an initial purchase, your sales team needs to evaluate the customer’s existing pain points. That’s where cross-selling and upselling come into play. Before we go any further, let’s clear up a few definitions.

Cross-selling seeks to add lateral products that correspond to the original sale. For example, adding fertilizer specialized for houseplants to the purchase of a fiddle-leaf fig. Cross-selling gives your sales team the opportunity to further delight your customers and build around a sale.

Upselling adds to a sale by upgrading or enhancing the original product. For example, upgrading a software purchase to a premium subscription. Sales teams can use upselling to build on an existing product.

3 Ways To Meet Your Existing Customer’s Needs

At the end of the day, cross-selling and upselling require the basic tools your sales team uses everyday, just in a different context. To understand that context, you need to consider the following:

Who is your buyer persona? How can you actively listen to better understand and meet their needs?
What does the customer journey look like? Where do you see customer delight, or customer displeasure?
What is your customer’s existing problem? What is your solution?

Know Your Buyer Better Through Active Listening

Listening is arguably the most important aspect of communication. You know that urge to speak up when your teammate or customer is talking? Yeah, that’s bad listening, and not what we recommend. Active listening means your sales team gathers information that helps retain customers and meet their needs better.

Passive listening is listening without active presence. It’s when your brain either checks out entirely, or isn’t processing, troubleshooting, and problem-solving the information your customer is sharing. Failure to develop active listening skills leads to mixed messages, frustration, wasted time, and confusion. Nothing good there for the customer, or for the sales team.

What Do Your Customers Want? A Customer Journey Map Will Tell You

The Customer Journey is one of the most important pieces of information that a digital marketer and business owner can have. It’s a physical representation of your customers’ experiences with your company. It reveals the time and place a potential customer decided not to make a purchase with your company, and what prevented them from moving forward. Essentially, it tells you what your customers need or want from you.

A customer journey map helps solve problems for your customers at every point that they interact with your brand. It is an invaluable tool for improving the overall customer experience! Customer journey maps can encompass your entire company, or they can map a specific type of experience, or department within your brand.

Solve Your Customer’s Problems

People are motivated to solve problems. Your customer has a problem they want to resolve, and it’s your job to demonstrate how your company can guide them toward that resolution. This is the essential framework of StoryBrand messaging that we use here at Sauce.

Traditionally, marketing initiatives focus on your business or your product. StoryBrand refocuses the attention on the customer and their goals. It treats your business as the guide and the customer as the hero. The result? A compelling, engaging story that positions customers at the center (which is where every customer wants to be).

Storytelling is a powerful tool that makes or breaks a brand. Tell it right, and you’re on the path to success. Tell it wrong, and your brand is lost in the chatter of the marketplace.

Develop a Sales Strategy That Delivers With Sauce Marketing!

You won’t score consistent sales with a loyal customer base without a strategy. It takes time, analysis, and a fundamental understanding of your customer to create a series of strategies that work toward your overall business goals. At Sauce, we replace guesswork and trial and error with purpose and proven efficacy. You and your business are worth strategizing for. Set up a connect call with one of our Growth Guides today!