David Searns | Co-CEO
WE WANT YOU BACK…PLEAAAASE!
Can you guess the subject of this week’s newsletter?
Last week, we looked at strategies to upsell and cross-sell your current clients. If you missed it, here's a link.
And today, you guessed it, we’re looking at strategies to win back former clients.
How do you win a client back?
Step one: Understand why they left.
Oftentimes, people assume that the only reason they lose clients is due to price—someone comes in and offers a lower mark-up or bill rate.
While price definitely matters, especially in staffing, it’s just one of the reasons why staffing companies lose clients.
The top reasons for client loss include:
- Ability to solve a problem. Your client has a business challenge, and they don’t see you as the solution.
Too often, your clients see you as being good at just one thing (whatever you did for them last), and they forget (or are simply unaware) of everything else you can do.
- Service problems. Something’s wrong with your delivery.
Maybe it’s candidate quality, time to deliver, responsiveness to issues, reporting or billing problems, or something else. Unfortunately, in an industry as competitive as staffing, it’s often easier for buyers to move on to a new vendor than to work with a current supplier to solve the problem.
- Indifference. Your customers don’t think you care.
In B2B sales, more than 50% of client loss happens due to indifference—suppliers are not communicating frequently enough, not showing they have the client's best interests at heart, and not being proactive enough in service delivery to discover needs and address issues.
This may sound obvious, but to win back clients, you need to know where you are starting from—your strategy will be different for each client depending on the reason you lost them.
Six Strategies to Win Back Clients
1. Simply reconnect.
Yes, sometimes it’s really this easy. Pick up the phone and call your former clients. Or set up an automation to reconnect with all the hiring managers you’ve worked with in the past.
When reconnecting, look to catch up with your former contacts. Find out what’s new with them. Ask about what’s going on with their company, in their role, or if you had a personal relationship, in their lives outside of work.
Don’t reach out with a goal to sell. Start by simply trying to reconnect and re-establish the relationship.
2. Nurture relationships.
In staffing (and just about any business), out of sight is out of mind, and maybe you were just not doing enough to stay top-of-mind.
What are you doing to stay in front of every client, every prospect, and every former client?
Since there are only 24 hours in a day, this is where tools like email newsletters and automation sequences come into play. They give you an easy way to nurture relationships with all your current and former clients on a consistent basis.
3. Reconnect with your champions.
Undoubtedly, some of the people you worked with in the past really liked working with you. They were unhappy when you were replaced, but they were not the decision makers.
Who are your biggest fans?
Make a list. Look at each client you lost. Identify the specific individuals with whom you had the best relationships and reach out. Call. Connect on LinkedIn. Send them a card.
With these people, your goal is to rekindle the relationship and ask their advice on how you can get back in with their company. If you find that a champion has moved on to a new employer, ask about the best ways to open the door with their new firm.
4. Study your competitors.
How did they take business from you? What are their strengths? Their weaknesses?
Determine where you have opportunities to outperform your rivals. You may not beat them everywhere, but if you can find niches where you can consistently win, you can use this differentiation to re-open doors with former clients—and go after their current clients more aggressively.
5. Give people a reason to come back.
You see this is B2C marketing all the time: “New and Improved” or “Now open under new management.”
What’s changed in your business since the last time you worked with this client?
Here are a few things to consider:
- New niche markets you serve
- New technology you’ve implemented
- New team members (and the skills they bring)
- New problems you can solve
- New service delivery models
Review the reasons why you lost the business, and ideally, match your “what’s new” to what matters most to each client.
6. Treat former clients like a new prospect
If it’s been more than a year or two since you served a client, it’s likely that there will be new staffing decision-makers in that organization.
They won’t know about (or care about) your past relationship.
That’s okay. Treat them as you would any new prospect. Use tools like integrated direct marketing, sales funnel automation, and account-based marketing to reach out.
And with these prospects, you can use your past experience to better personalize your outreach. Show the new staffing buyers how much you already know about their business and the specific ways you can help them address their challenges.
The more you can personalize your sales and marketing to these specific prospects, the more likely you will be to win them back.
Be patient. Be persistent.
Don’t expect your win-back efforts to be a one-call close. Most likely, every former client has found new staffing partners.
But just like your prospecting, if you are patient, persistent, and consistently demonstrate your value and eagerness to help, you will win back some (and maybe a lot of) your former clients.
Next week, in part 4 of this series, we’ll look at best practices for selling to cold leads. |
