My wife and I own a couple rental houses. For a few years, I’ve thought about refinancing and assumed we could get a better rate that made sense. However, it was never a problem that was urgent enough for me to take action. So, I wouldn’t think about it – I had too many other things going on to worry about possibly saving a few bucks a month. It was a “didn’t really think about it” problem.
Then one day I received an email from my bank that holds the mortgage. They stated that I’d be eligible for a better rate and wanted to discuss on the phone for a few minutes. Since it was the bank that held the note, I agreed. When we spoke, she made the application process extremely easy. She also laid out the amount of money we could save and how the place would be fully paid before our daughter went to college. Now, sticking in my old mortgage was a “I need to fix this now” problem. We moved forward and refinanced, and my banker earned a nice sale.
Your current customers probably have dozens of “didn’t really think about it” problems. Some examples off the top of my head: outdated equipment not providing to highest level of security, IT department paying too much overtime, unpredictable service charges, etc. No matter how strong your relationship, your customers may never bring up these problems to you because they’re not thinking about it. They’re thinking about all the video crashing their network, or the new expansion building that requires access control and video by July. The “didn’t really think about it” problems are real, but since they’re not urgent, your customers don’t think about them. It’s up to you to find them and bring them to the surface.
The #1 idea to finding more business within your current customers: find real problems that aren’t being thought about right now and solve them for your customers.
Below is a two-step process to follow. We’ll use the “unpredictable service charges” as an example throughout the two steps.
- Look for clues to the problems. If your customer isn’t thinking about it, they’ll probably not tell you about it. You have to find clues to their “didn’t really think about it” problems. For example, if you hear of your service team making multiple service calls to one of your customer sites, then you have a clue that your customer is probably getting hit with unpredictable costs.
- Validate and offer to solve the problem at the same time. If you move in too hard, your customer will push back on you. If you only ask for validation, they’ll likely deny it because they don’t want to deal with it. You must validate and then offer to solve the problem. Simply state something like this: “It seems that you’re getting a lot of service calls lately, and you might be getting hit with some unpredictable expenses. I can do an assessment to show you how much you can save by becoming one of our service plan members.”
Since these are your customers and you already have a relationship, you have access to the type of information that will give you clues to their problems. Also, you’ll be able to have the conversation because you likely meet with them periodically. If another bank would’ve emailed me in my example above, I never would’ve replied. I trusted the email because they were my bank and knew my exact scenario.
So, if you want to find a ton more business from your current customers, and become a ridiculously valuable resource to them, find their “didn’t really think about it” problems and offer to solve them.
