One of the things I work with quite often with my clients is building strong horizontal sales from existing verticals. What I mean by this is most businesses focus all their attention on winning the clients business, but as soon as the deal is in the bag, they move on to hunt for the next.
Now I’m not saying that the service offered is poor quality, quite the contrary to be honest. However, the easiest sale you will ever get is the second sale, and this second sale gives validity to the first one, this builds customer loyalty.
So rather than running around looking for lots of new verticals, actually develop each vertical. And by developing it, I mean to add in those horizontal sales, upsell, ask them to eat more of your pie.
I read some research recently which suggests that McDonald’s spends close to $2 to attract customers to the drive-through, considering the burger is a little over $2 the margin is squeezed. However, think what they do when you’re there, they upsell, ‘Do You Want Fries, What About A Shake’ Would you like to go large etc.… Now all of a sudden, the profit jumps to around eight times the previous margin.
So when you are about to scratch your head looking for new data or new customers. Remember your existing ones, what else can you help them with, what other products do you offer that they may not know about.
Add those horizontals to your existing verticals, and you will see your profits soar, and your customer loyalty will quickly follow.