Winning clients from the past can help propel your future business endeavors. Having a service business can be tough; most do not have a physical product they can sell to help generate income they need to thrive. Or you have wrapped up clients projects and are just in between times. We have discussed How To Win Clients and Playing For Keeps With Clients, thus far. Today let’s discuss getting former clients back on your schedule.
Follow Up + Check In
Every service business should be checking on their current clients with the projects they are working on. No one likes when a business owner goes ghost. Clients will tend to think the worst and get scared. Communication is essential. When it comes to your former clients this matters too. Do you check on them after the initial service and that’s it? Personally, checking on them every quarter is a great rule of thumb to keep your company fresh in their mind. Also, if you notice on social media something great happened in regards to their business send them a handwritten note congratulating them.
Offer Promotions and Discounts
Everyone loves a discount or promotion code. With this you would slightly discount a package you know a former client can use. Not a huge deep discount that you wouldn’t make money on the service. Before learning to do graphic design on my own, I was a recurring client of a graphic designer I used on a freelancer website. He created a package from my business when I went ghost for a couple of months. He created a special package for me that I used to book him on a regular for. This enticed me to purchase the package at a discount rate. When I mentioned that I might write more eBooks he sent me another proposal for them. Currently considering.
Share Ideas For Business
This is similar to going the extra mile that was mentioned in the “Playing For Keeps With Clients” article. Say, that you are a graphic designer who worked with Emily several months ago; helping her build her brand identity including logo and much more. Emily’s clothing business is doing really well all around. Reach out to Emily with some graphic design ideas you think she would love for her business. Things she might not even be thinking about to include with her packaging and more. Letting her know that even updating her social media icons and small things of that nature can bring in a stream of income.
It is extremely important to be proactive in business if you want to succeed. You can not wait for clients to come to you or hope former clients will come back to you. Put it on your calendar to reach out to them. At the start of the month, every person who purchases an eBook gets an email asking how it helped their business life. This helps establish relationships as well as other things.
Are you in a slow season with business and needing new clients? Have you thought of reaching out to past clients to see if they need your services?
Image by THX0477, Creative Commons
