Two weeks ago I covered the idea of growing sales by “touching” your existing customers so they buy more from you. An important first step involves examining what customers are currently buying so you can determine what they are not yet buying. Here’s an example of how to analyze this:

For your business, list all of your clients on a spreadsheet. Then add their total purchases for a given time period, the amounts of purchases by type and other information that will help your analysis.

In this example Stock Pot Spas purchased a total of $5,000 in pool parts during 2009. They were the third largest customer. But they have seven service trucks, so their average purchase per truck was only $714 putting them $500 - $700 below the average purchase per truck for several other customers. Why?

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Are they buying from several other distributors? If they are and you can build your sales per truck to $1,500, your total revenues will more than double for Stock Pot Spas. So how would you do that?

It turns out that Stock Pot Spas is buying only small amounts of product lines A, B and C. That’s strange, because whenever Part D, a pump motor, is purchased, Parts A, B and C are needed to complete the repair job. Revenues for A, B and C should be three to four times greater than they are. Customer service representatives need to be shown how to identify related product sets and how to ‘cross sell’ them whenever part D is ordered.

Also Part E costs 50 percent more than part D but lasts four times longer and has a better warranty. Customer service representatives should be shown how to ‘up sell’ to Part E whenever Part D is asked for.

Finally, Part A is a silicon lubricant that is always needed to seal pool pumps. Pool service technicians are always running out of or losing the tubes. So, it’s a real help if customer service representatives ‘deep sell’ every order for a D or C with multiple orders for the lubricant.

This method is used by many companies and is often referred to as ‘account analysis.’ For example, the computer screens used by Farmers and Allstate insurance agents allow them to identify for each client which types of insurance they are and aren’t yet purchasing. The agent can then offer their clients the full range of policies during insurance reviews.

Heads up, though! The table contains a mortal threat to sales rather than an opportunity. Post a comment on the sales blog — insidetucsonbusiness.wordpress.com — stating what the threat is and how you would neutralize it.



Contact Sam Williams, president of New View Group LLC, at swilliams@newviewgroup.net or (520) 390-0586. Williams is looking for topics readers would like to see covered, or with questions or comments. New View Group provides revenue development consulting to CEOs and sales managers and sales and sales management skills training to business to business sales teams. Read his blog at insidetucsonbusiness.wordpress.com. His Sales Judo appears the first and third weeks of each month in Inside Tucson Business.