The $2.2 Million WinBack Campaign

An Interview with Jean-Francois 'Jef' Carpentier

How did Jef Carpentier help generate $2.2 million in a client winback campaign? What strategies were used and why was the ROI significant? In this article Jef explains it all, and offers key insights into reacquiring past clients gleaned from over a decade of winback experience.

Dan Pfister: Jef, before we get to the story of how you reactivate past clients, could you share a little about yourself and your company?

Jean-Francois 'Jef' Carpentier: I'm an multi-discipline IT specialist, currently working as Operations Manager at Modulus Data, a leader in SMB and Enterprise data integration.  My work history has taken me through many industry domains including Hospitality, Healthcare, Human Resources and Software Development.

Dan: Could you tell me about one of your client reactivation programs?

Jef: I've been doing client reactivation for roughly 12 years, dealing with small business as well as working win-back projects for clients affected by major acquisitions. In one particular campaign, a number of clients were lost in the process and I was the SME of the team that was charged with winning back these accounts. 

The re-engagement team was assembled from various members of the product and service life-cycle teams including sales, dev-ops and functional teams. The goal was to use social media and client-outreach to both win back recently departed clients, but also to prevent client defection in progress. The team accomplished this by identifying client relationships with both access and strategic value, and then engaging them to regain their trust and business.

The end result of that campaign was a win back of approximately $2.2 million in business

The end result of that campaign was a win back of approximately $2.2 million in business from the duration of the campaign. Given the size of the team the ROI from the effort was quite high, and that’s not surprising because with past clients the value is always there. You're already familiar with the client, you already have an existing relationship, you don't have to find new names, and so on.

Most of those clients were content to stay but there's always attrition and getting back that attrition really depends on what kind of relationship you have with the client.

Now in terms of the clients who left in that project, most of them fit into two categories; Unhappy clients and re-negotiating clients.

Dissatisfied or unhappy clients represent ones that were unhappy for any number of reasons including technical concerns and there were also people who were open to returning if they could negotiate a better deal.

The easiest ones to win back were the people who wanted to renegotiate or had a service concern with the new acquisition. These people don't necessarily have a complaint or an immediate pain point, so it’s more about listening to their concerns and finding ways to settle those concerns with the people, services and tools available to you. This is an understandably easier task as in reality both of your client’s feet weren’t yet ‘out of the sandbox’.

In either situation, you need to do a lot of listening. Let your client talk. Work with your internal teams to create an action-plan to document next steps and action items. 

Dan: And what about the people who are difficult to win back?

Jef: These engagements are considerably more complex and it will involve ‘reading the room’. If a client is deeply disengaged, it will take significant work to try and regain that goodwill or trust as they are likely not directly communicating with you.

It all starts with parting on as good terms as possible.

It all starts with parting on as good terms as possible. It's really important to have a strong exit meeting with the other company so that you can foster good relationships with your contacts.

Now there will be hot and cold clients. If a client is cold, it's going to be monumentally difficult to regain their trust and open lines of communication. Reengaging them is going to be just like a cold call and that means our strategy will be less about listening and more about raw sales tactics.

In my opinion, your energy should be more focused on the warm contacts. 

People don't always notice how much soft intelligence that’s available in the background to help you make a call to a warm contact more ‘human’, especially with online-meeting calls. There are kids, there are pets and knowing these things can make human to human contact much more personal, and this can act as the grease that makes the engine of conversation run smoothly.

We've all read so many books and articles about networking and leveraging contacts, yet I feel many prospects are lost due to how little networks are leveraged.

Dan: So when a client leaves, exactly how do you engage them and maintain that relationship?

If they're talking about something on social media, it's important for them or their agenda.

Jef: I try to regularly chat with them to make sure I’m top of mind or communicate with them when they post on LinkedIn. If they're talking about something on social media, it's important for them or their agenda. Helping support that shows engagement, and can provide insight on what is taking place in their organization.

A lot of people just don't engage with their past clients, but something as simple as a regular series of “likes and comments” keeps you in that relationship without having to do much more than a few minutes of work a day.

So by maintaining that relationship, and keeping human to human contact, it can make your task that much easier. You might even be lucky enough to learn about an opportunity you can leverage, like a conflict in the client’s new engagement(s) or a new need that has not yet been fulfilled.

But make it about the client, not about their problem. If you just come out of the blue and say “Hey, I hear you're having problems”, well that’s obviously a little toxic. 

But by keeping the relationship warm, you can humanly step in and ask questions like, “So how's the transition going?” And they’re likely to be much more open to sharing what’s going on behind the scenes. 

They could tell you about a big concern or even limitation in their strategy; and now you've just learned something very important about your competing platform and about the experience they’re having.

While this doesn't mean that you're going to jump on that piece of information, it just gives you ammunition and kindling to start and stoke the fire whenever you feel the time is right.

But most of the time when a client leaves, people pretty much stop communicating entirely - they stop interacting on LinkedIn and social media and I feel that’s a big mistake.

Dan: So let’s say that you feel the time is right to pitch them. What’s the first non-obvious step?

You need to have your systems ready to quickly re-onboard them so you can say “If you come back, we can push a button and go right back into play.”

Jef: If you decide it’s time to strike you have to be 100% prepared, and a big part of that preparedness is how you or your organization handle your client’s data and projects after a relationship ends. If the new vendor isn’t delivering for the former client you need to have your systems ready to quickly re-onboard them so you can say “If you come back, we can push a button and go right back into play.”

While it’s not always feasible, you might be able to leverage your company’s IT backup policies in case a project needs to be strategically restored, because you never know how quick a client will want to jump back into your boat if your efforts are successful.

Dan: That’s great, you’re 100% prepared to strike when the iron is hot.

Jef: Exactly. And even if you don't win back the client’s service entirely, you might be able to get a foot in the door with a smaller service that compensates for something that their new vendor can’t do well.

Dan: So just to recap. When a client leaves, make sure that the exit meeting is positive and maintain the relationship with regular outreach. That contact will help keep you up to date with what the company is doing and may help you spot opportunities to do more work with them in the future.

Okay, so your contact is a great source of intel, where else can we get useful information?

Jef: I get a lot of hard and soft-intelligence through media announcements. You'd be surprised how much you can learn by reading quarterly engagements and reports.

A company may talk about the fact that they’re making site investments, and they want to build a new building. Well if you're an IT provider that means that there's cabling that has to be done, there are machines to be bought, and all sorts of IT services are needed.

This can be like ingesting dry kibble, but useful information is out there and it’s important to have someone on your team go through it so you understand what's going on in the client's business.

You still need that human contact because you can learn things by talking to people that you’d never read in a report or on a company page on LinkedIn.

And you can’t just rely on hard intelligence – you still need that human contact because you can learn things by talking to people that you’d never read in a report or on a company page on LinkedIn.

Dan: How do you handle the meeting or call where you start selling?

Jef:  Start off with the social element and glide into the actual business talk and the problem they’re having now. I always ensure that the client has ample time to comfortably describe their new/ongoing needs and have your team ready in background with the right tools and assets.

And when addressing the problem, you can say something like “That sounds like it's a hell of a problem. I bet that if you give us some of the details, we could probably get that set up on our site, and we could get that banged out for you within a couple of days. You don't need to suffer through all this.”

Or you could say “If you give us your version of your new requirements, we can get started working on this right away and we'll make a proof of concept so that you can test it.”

Dan: Making that transition from the human to the business conversation can be dicey. How do you make sure it doesn’t go south?

Jef: There's often an automatic resentment that gets generated when someone feels like the only reason you're talking to them is to try to sell them something. That's why we put so much effort into nurturing the human relationship – it’s important because the business relationship becomes facilitated by the human one.

So having a warm relationship gives you a good base, and you know that person to a certain degree so that helps too, but it’s also important to make sure the client feels like they’re in control and that means asking questions.

You should always ask questions if you’re concerned that directly telling your contact about your solution will make the conversation head south.

You can say “If you don't mind, I can suggest something.” Or “Do you mind if I put in my two cents?” That gives them the control – it gives them the option of inviting you in or not. 

Dan: That’s a very nice approach.

Jef: Giving clients control often allows you to have a much better conversation right from the start. If there is one universal truth that I can guarantee, it’s people love control. 

Dan: Is there anything we should pay special attention to when reengaging a company where things ended poorly?

Jef: This is a more complex matter. Try and keep the conversation positive, but you have to be willing to acknowledge the reason behind the poor-end to the prior relationship. 

You want the client to know you understand why they were dissatisfied and give them good reasons to have confidence that you’ll provide what they need in the future.  

Acknowledge mistakes, find requirements, establish solutions, create goals and set an aggressive in-house mandate to meet them.

Dan: So let’s say that you’ve successfully won back the client. Other than delivering what was promised, what do you do next?

You did a lot of work and you found that golden nugget, that thing that won them back and now you need to take additional steps to ensure that they feel really good about their decision.

Jef: When you regain a client, making that return successful will pay huge dividends.

You did a lot of work and you found that golden nugget, that thing that won them back and now you need to take additional steps to ensure that they feel really good about their decision.

It could be as easy as having a single point of contact on your team to handle any issues that come up or it could be giving them a few months of white glove service at no cost. Offering $500 worth of extra service now is an investment that could turn into $40,000 worth of business just a couple of months down the road, especially at renewal time.

Dan: Is there a final thought you’d like to leave us with?

Winning back past clients delivers a high ROI but everything you do won’t always yield results. 

Wayne Gretzky used to say “You miss 100% of all the shots you don’t take.”

If you’re not doing the research, if you’re not maintaining warm relationships then the shots you take are far more likely to miss. Some clients might wander back on their own, but that's the exception, not the norm. 

If you want people to come back you have to work for it. You have to think, work and obtain that success, you can’t just hope for it to happen.