Want more business? Look inside.

I could feel and hear her frustration. Ava used a great strategy to reach out to prospective clients, but she was frustrated: "Nobody is responding."

Sound familiar? A common theme in our industry is MORE. Whether it is a publicly held or privately owned company, that theme is the same. More revenue creates more opportunities for companies to do the things we are great at. I have yet to meet a manager who believes, "We have enough right now."

One commonly overlooked place for new business is your current customers. Depending on which research you read, getting a current customer to spend more is about five times easier than finding a new customer. Yet, in our haste and zest for new business, we look outside rather than inside. The reality is we should do both.

A recent MediaPost blog entitled Looking For Growth? Start With Your Current Customers reveals five innovative ways to drive growth from your current customers:

Better understand and optimize their journey to conversion. No matter how well you are converting prospects into users, there are likely parts of the process of conversion that can be improved and optimized. Review how current customers became buyers and identify process gaps and leaks that are softening conversion. Onboard new users to ensure they begin using your product. You may have converted a customer into a sale, but it's important to ensure that they begin using and gaining value from your product or service.

Improve customer engagement to turn users into fans. Just because customers use your products or services doesn't make them loyal supporters of your brand. It's important to communicate with them so they feel connected beyond the transactional, and that your product/service is more than just its attributes. Increase lifetime value of current customers. Current users have chosen you for a specific solution you provide. But they may not know about others you have – or higher tiers of your offering they might grow into.

Learn from them to improve your offerings, your marketing and your success moving forward. A less obvious but no less tangible way current users can help you grow is to learn from them to create the conditions for growth. Dig into your customer data to know what makes them tick.

Because we have been fielding lots of RAB member calls lately on prospecting and new business development, we'll focus on the topic again on Monday, and give you another perspective on current and past customers and how to approach them.

If the old ways are no longer working, it's time to explore new ways. As always, if you have successes, we would love to share them with other members, so please email or call. We love celebrating your success!

Happy Friday!

Jeff Schmidt is the SVP of Professional Development. You can reach him at Jeff.Schmidt@rab.com. You can all so connect with him on X and LinkedIn.