The Importance of Taking Inventory of Your Current Clients

We all know it is often easier and more cost effective to keep a client than to get a new one, right? With that in mind, when was the last time you looked at existing clients as prospects for additional products or services?

If you haven’t done this yet, I highly recommend that you consider conducting an inventory of your existing clients and the services and/or products you provide them. An easy way to do this is to use a red/yellow/green system where you assign each client a color depending on your readiness to approach them. Red category clients are the ones that will need more work or preparation. The green category clients are those that are ready for a phone call with an offer. And obviously, the yellow category clients don’t need quite as much work as the red category.

Here are some ideas to consider for the inventory:

1.???? Contacts and relationships. People do business with people they know, they like and they trust. Be very objective and honest about the status of your relationship with your clients. Be sure to nurture relationships throughout AND after the end of the contracts.

2.???? Your expertise and the solutions you can provide. A great negotiator offers solutions that are innovative and creative. How can you showcase your existing or updated expertise to your clients?

3.???? Commonality. Look at your clients by industry and assess if what is working well for one client will work well for another. Are there any common challenges and solutions? Look at the successful solutions and strategies in one industry to determine whether those same solutions and strategies can be applied to other industries.

4.???? SWOT analysis. This is a great tool that can provide lots of insight for your analysis and you can present the information as background and intelligence during your negotiation, especially if you identify a solution to the weakness or threats you discover. Remember, SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.

5.???? Client surveys. These can be powerful tools because of the information they reveal. Be careful to keep them short, offer sections for open-ended comments and allow for anonymity.

Great negotiators are proactive and prepared. How well do you know your existing clients? The good news is that taking the time to conduct an inventory will also give you insight you can use to approach new clients. Time spent researching, reviewing, analyzing, learning, building and nurturing relationships is not wasted.

Contact me if you need some help thinking this through or if you want to hone your negotiation skills. I’m on a mission to help women business owners embrace creative thinking in business.