The Easiest Strategy to Gain New Clients (original) (raw)

Randy Dean

Randy Dean

President, Revel IT | Technological Truth-Teller | Bringing Joy the world of IT Consulting

Published Jul 7, 2017

Most companies are interested in growing sales and adding new clients. I've worked at many firms and have found that many sales "strategies" were clueless or a waste of time. At Sterling Commerce the strategy at one point became, "we have to be more of a consultant to our clients". It may have sounded good but our product was a very specific solution and either the client needed it or they did not. Consulting, which we weren't really capable of wasn't going to change this nor would it drive additional sales.

So how do you add clients? In the long term, I believe you gain clients by being good at what you do. This combined with a client happiness culture allows you to benefit from the referral and network affects that this will create. At Fast Switch, over 95% of our clients became clients through referral or because we did a good job for a senior leader and that leader went to a new firm and wanted to work with us. Trust me, this is much easier and a more enjoyable way to add clients than cold calling.

So, how do you position your company for success in this area? There are 3 key elements you need to have in place: 1) A passion for the product or service that your company provides 2) Solid people and processes within the business that ensure consistent quality 3) A corporate value system that places client happiness over profits or sales growth.

In the case of Fast Switch, we look to hire people who really like what we do and who share a value of doing what is right for our consultants and our clients. Our guiding principle is that we want to treat Clients and Consultants as we would like to be treated. This often means not trying to maximize profit on a particular engagement or client but instead looking for ways to add more value to that client.

This approach has led to our sales growing from 5Minsalesin2005toover5M in sales in 2005 to over 5Minsalesin2005toover100M today and has positioned us to have opportunities to grow much further that includes new offices and clients in diverse cities including LA, Denver, Phoenix, Hartford, Chicago and Houston. This may not be the astounding sales growth of great companies like Amazon or Uber, but it's a very sustainable growth model that is based on creating a strong base of satisfied clients.

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