How to Increase Your Customer Base

Growing a company takes hard work, dedication, and, most importantly, customers. Without customers, your business wouldn’t exist. Even with the best technology, most companies still struggle to find effective ways to acquire and retain new customers. This is why it’s essential to continually strive to grow your customer base, especially when the market conditions are challenging.

But how exactly do you go about growing your customer base? Business Development Manager, Pete Bramm, sat down with Title Sales expert Darryl Turner for a conversation on getting more customers to support your business growth. Here is a recap of what they believe are the best ways to grow and retain your customers.

Prefer to watch the video recording of the webinar? Click here.

Focusing on Your Customer Base Instead of Your Order Count

According to Turner, order counts are lagging indicators determined by market conditions. Since you can’t change the market conditions, the best thing to do is focus on the size of your customer base since this is a leading indicator.

For instance, when your customers’ businesses are down, the business in your title company will also be down. In such cases, you can’t focus on overemphasizing your quantity of orders. Instead, your focus should be on how many customers you have at the moment. Don’t pull all your eggs in one basket, or in this case, one customer.

“If you can get more customers, then you know you’re doing some things right,” said Turner. Knowing how to add more customers to your business will help reduce customer attrition and be your saving grace even in challenging market conditions. 

Successful Strategies You Can Use to Get Clients

Before delving into strategies, Turner explained why it’s vital to identify the size of your customer base. Identifying your customer base is essential as it helps you set your company’s goals. Turner asserts, “If you’re going to set goals around the size of the customer base, you have to focus on first identifying the size of your customer base.”

There are several strategies you can use to acquire new customers. The most important aspect is to remember that it’s not about the sale but the relationship. Here are some strategies that Turner recommends:

Cold Calling Strategy

Turner refers to this as the “difficult technique” because you’re trying to pursue people who have never done business with you. Many people try to avoid cold calling due to their fear of rejection. But by steering clear of cold calling, you have already ensured you have missed out on an opportunity.

Phone calls stand out and can make a difference, considering the typical businessperson receives 115 emails daily.

The best way to succeed with this strategy is by providing value upfront. Don’t go in and try to sell customers something, but look at what you can do to help them. Keep your calls relevant, timely, and customer-focused.

Warm Contact

This strategy is especially vital when trying to prevent your existing clients from leaving your company or woo back those who have already left. Turner explains that the best approach is to create an experience that makes customers want to return to your company.

Darryl Turner recommends various techniques that you can use under the warm contact strategy. These include:

Calling to Say Thank You

How do you feel when someone takes a moment to express their appreciation of you?  It feels nice, doesn’t it? That’s the feeling you should want your customers to associate with you and your business.

Often overlooked, saying thank you is a simple yet valuable way to grow your relationship with your customers.  In fact, 68% of customers leave because they believe the business does not care about them.

You should make it a habit of calling customers to thank them for their business. The thank you shouldn’t be a mere automated email. Instead, call them on the phone and appreciate them for their business. Exercising this gratitude goes a long way and builds better relationships with your customers. It’s also a great way to gather feedback on how you can continue to create raving fans.

Understanding Their Preferences

You should ask customers a few questions to understand their preferences. “Give them a couple of positive updates during the conversation,” recommends Turner. 

It would be best if the updates aligned with the customer’s preferences. Personalizing the updates can increase your chances of re-engaging with the customer. Towards the end of your conversation, you should ask the client if they are willing to come back and transact with your company.

Pursuing Inactive Customers

It costs less to keep a satisfied customer than it does to acquire new ones. In fact, the probabilities are higher as well. Businesses have a 60 to 70% chance of selling to an existing customer, while the probability of selling to a new prospect is only 5% to 20%.

That’s why focusing on repeat business, and customer loyalty is so important. Turner challenges title companies to list 20 customers or whatever size best suits them. Look at every name on the list and ask yourself whether they have a deal with you at the moment. This question is crucial because most closers don’t talk to their customers when they are not involved in an active contract.

If you don’t engage your customers often enough, your competitors will. If someone isn’t in a deal with you, call them and ask them how they are doing. Let them know you miss them.

More importantly, ask them what they are working on and how you can help them. It’s a great way to not only re-engage them but gather valuable market data as well.

Should You Take the Cold or the Warm Approach?

“Never take the difficult path until you’ve mastered the easy path,” advises Turner. This means that you should first grow your customer base with clients who are already in your database or have done business with you in the past. Once you’ve mastered this, you can focus on acquiring new customers.

However, this doesn’t mean that you should not call new listings. It only means that you should first master how to make your current customers stay.

Cross-Train Your Closing Staff to Increase Your Customer Base

You can also increase your customer base by cross-training your staff. Turner believes that this is an excellent strategy because it allows you to have more than one person working on acquiring new customers.  

This helps you close more deals and prevents you from putting all your eggs in one basket. If one team member isn’t performing well, you have other team members who can pick up the slack. The goal is to ensure that everyone on your team can create an experience that makes customers want to return to your company.

Experiences are tied to emotions. Every time someone transacts with your company, they have an experience that creates an emotion. Emotion drives the decision of whether a customer will continue doing business with you. Your focus should be on ensuring that the decision is in your favor by creating a positive experience.

As civil rights activist Maya Angelou once put it, “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

Take Advantage of the Slowdown

As businesses focus on attracting more business, they often fail to dedicate the proper amount of focus, time, and effort to their customer connections. Now is the time to get ahead of today’s challenges to become even more efficient and intentional with your loyal customers. Creating positive experiences will help you connect better and retain those relationships for the long run.

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