Grow Your Business by Expanding Customer Relationships
You know the test of a true friend: They’ll tell you when there’s spinach between your teeth and save you from an embarrassing situation. Solid, long-term relationships are built on honesty – even when news is difficult to deliver. The same thing goes for business relationships, too.
As an IT service provider, your customers depend on you to keep their IT environments free of “spinach” they might not be seeing themselves. In the case of IT, the consequences of not knowing there’s an issue are far more significant than social embarrassment. Your customers are looking to you to keep them secure and running efficiently. If you do it well, you’ll retain profitable relationships and decrease the need to cold call for new customers.
Keeping customers versus constant selling
Retaining long-term relationships through honest feedback and proactive recommendations can pay major dividends for your business. You’ve probably already heard that the cost of keeping a customer is significantly lower than obtaining a new one. Let’s review:
Acquiring a new customer requires money spent on advertising, sales calls, incentives, and proposal development – all before you make a cent of new revenue.
Time is money. You may have to cold call a dozen or more companies before you connect with one potential new customer. Even a good prospect may need to be called eight times before you land a meeting.
Prospective customers may already have a relationship with an IT service provider, so you’ll have to be ready to discount your offerings to capture even a slice of their business.
It’s easy to see that the more customers you can retain, the less selling you have to do. It’s no surprise that nearly two-thirds of sales representatives say cold calls are the worst part of their job. At Voleer we’ve seen how a focus on retention means your team gets to do more of the work that’s at the core of your business: serving customers.
Tried-and-true relationship building
Having a great relationship with your existing customers means you have plenty of opportunities to talk to them about improvements that make their environment more secure, more efficient, and more productive. This pays off for your customer, and it pays off for you with more chances to cross-sell, up-sell, and earn recurring revenues.
Business relationships rely on a lot of the same skills that maintain friendships. Let’s start with the tried-and-true relationship skills: When your team practices these, it’s easy to identify opportunities to expand services to your customers:
Build trust by demonstrating that you care about their business. Listen and always deliver on your promises.
Be honest – just like that friend who’s willing to point out the spinach in your teeth – and never sell something customers don’t need.
Be proactive and deliver the unexpected. Whenever possible, delight your customer by going above and beyond with additional service and convenience.
Demonstrate that you understand your customer’s business in depth and bring them relevant recommendations that show you’re looking out for them.
Voleer is the perfect toolbox to enhance your relationship-building efforts.
Differentiate your services with Voleer
If your team is practicing the service skills that build long-term customer relationships, a Voleer subscription will give them easy tools that help retain and expand those relationships. Voleer assessments and automations set your services apart and allow you to truly customize solutions for customers.
Here are just a few ideas for using Voleer to retain and expand existing business:
Use periodic or recurring Voleer assessments to get a detailed picture of the security of your customer’s Microsoft 365 or Azure environment. They’ll thank you when they learn how to head off major problems with your recommended remediation efforts.
Help manage Microsoft Teams sprawl with the Microsoft Teams assessment. As enthusiastic employees adopt and use Teams, internal IT may be unaware of growth that can easily get out of control. You can point out potential issues and offer solutions.
Give Teams users an added boost with pro tips and training that help increase adoption and productivity. The Voleer Microsoft Teams adoption report allows you to clearly identify areas where your professional services can add value.
Help customers manage their Azure environment with the Azure Resource Optimization Assessment. This assessment helps identify over-allocated or orphaned disk space, inactive resources, and resources that could potentially cause future issues.
Voleer assessments produce clear, attractive reports that are easy to share and discuss with customers – helping you pinpoint real, honest solutions that build long-term business through trusting relationships.
Make Voleer your secret weapon for providing standout service that customers can’t do without. If you haven’t tried Voleer, sign up for our free trial and take it for a spin or contact us to speak with a Voleer expert.
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