The vast majority of companies and commercial managers are constantly looking for ways to win new customers to increase sales. It is normal, it is understandable that this is so.
However, they forget that selling more is not only related to acquiring new customers. An important – but often overlooked – part of the work relates to recovering inactive clients.
Who they are and why they are inactive, why it is important to recover them and how to do this work, is the which we will discuss here.
What are inactive customers?
As incredible as it may seem, this is one of the most difficult questions to answer, firstly because some companies do not even have parameters to determine which customers can be classified as such and secondly because such conditions vary from one segment to another and the market in which they are located, among other variables.
But there is an answer, but it must be given by each company.
The first obvious parameter is the frequency or frequency of purchase. Sounds simple, doesn’t it?
Let’s consider the automotive segment, where, at first, outsiders are led to think that because we are talking about the same product, the criteria are the same. But they are not!
Fleet owners and individuals do not buy a new car with the same frequency. In the second group, the frequency is also not the same among buyers of luxury and “popular” cars, if in Brazil we still have a model that can be classified as such.
If eventually there is degradation of the consumption scenario, for economic reasons, those who are more susceptible and who are the consumers of the most “cheap” vehicles will probably postpone the exchange of the vehicle until the situation becomes more favorable, causing the frequency to increase.
Want another example?
Imagine retail electronics and smart TVs, for example. The purchase frequency of a large retailer with national operations is not the same as for a single store or even for a small local chain with half a dozen stores. In the second case, the time required to turn the goods for each order delivered to the seller is usually much longer than in the first case.
That is, in average terms, the periodicity changes to what theoretically it is the same product and this type of influence factor exists in several segments and markets, which is why there is not one and the same answer.
These examples make it clear which aspects must be considered in the determination the frequency and that each company should know from its experience and knowledge of its customers.
Therefore, inactive customers are those who do not buy for a longer period than they normally do, considering who they are in the classification ABC of customers, what they buy, how much they buy and everything else that characterizes them.
Why are customers inactive?
The second question that we have to find the answer is particularly important, because depending on the reason for the inactivity, it will not only be and only an inactive one, as is the case of defaulters.
More than that, depending on the cause of default, it can be a permanently lost customer, as in your bankruptcy.
No matter how extreme the example given, it is due to a possible situation and demonstrates why it is important to know the reason.
When the reasons are in the company itself, such as delays in deliveries, price vs value, quality – in fact, lack of it – of the product or service, it is necessary to define the causes and present the solutions, after all there is no point in doing a job to recover the customer and what led him to be inactive, happen again.
In the repetition of the cause or even new ones, the chances of permanent loss can increase drastically.
Why is it important to recover inactive customers?
Getting straight to the point, from time to time, research and studies reveal that it is X times cheaper to recover a customer than to open a new one.
Crav arranging a number is difficult, after all here there is also a great dependence on several factors.
The cost of acquiring customers of a large pizza fast food chain is not the same as that of the pizzeria in your district. Even two pizzerias in the same neighborhood can be different.
But what is consensual and safe to say is that recovering them, depending on the reasons for inactivity, is usually cheaper.
And that’s not all!
As we saw in the post about “Reducing customer loss with Kaizen”, when inactivity goes on and on for the definitive loss, above all, depending on what motivated it, we have:
- Loss of investments made;
- Possible detracting customers;
- Worsening institutional image, especially digital reputation, enhanced by social networks;
- Lack of trust;
- Decreased billing.
How to recover inactive customers?
Well, once the answers to the previous questions are clear, the time has come roll up your sleeves and put into practice ca consistent steps to enable the recovery of inactives.
Assuming that you did the first task well, which was to define who the inactives are and for what reasons they received such a classification, it is necessary to separate them them in groups.
1. Segment customers
In addition to the typical and traditional segmentation, in which the ABC curve of customers is used and which is based on purchase volume (order value or quantities of products) to determine who is customer A, B or C, subdivide them into groups A, B and C, for the reasons they stopped buying.
This refinement in segmentation helps to have a more strategic vision in terms of approach by the commercial team and not just in terms of what is convenient for the seller, who will naturally feel more inclined to prioritize who gives him better commissions and/or favors the achievement of his goals.
Suppose that a factor that produced a significant amount of inactive was the technological obsolescence of a product, but that the company has an important release that promises to solve the issue. Starting with everyone who has in this factor the justification for inactivity may be strategically more important.
2. Prepare an action plan
Actually not just one, but you will probably have some action plans.
Yes, because in In the hypothetical situation of a new launch that we mentioned, the work of the commercial area is not the same as it will have with those to whom you stopped selling, because the competitor offered better prices and deadlines. As well as the large national retailer and the local retailer, they also require their own approaches.
Therefore, action plans must take into account the characteristics of customers and the reasons why you have not been selling lately.
3. Prepare support
With the action plans created, many will require support, such as Advertising and Marketing actions, whether traditional or digital, sales scripts, channels and/or communication tools (eg e-mail Marketing) or perhaps even social networks.
Note that depending on the factors that put customers in this condition, reactivating them may require almost as necessary to attract new customers. It may be necessary to recover part of the lost trust, new commercial conditions, improve and/or expand business and customer communication, improve the relationship with suppliers or count on new ones, to name just a few of the many possibilities.
Just demanding that your sales team do the work without giving them the necessary conditions, in some cases it will be ineffective and can even make them lose motivation.
4. Quantify
As you quantify, create and present goals and estimates for new acquired customers, for the recovered ones as well.
One recovered is not new in terms of time and investment required, nor should it be in terms of goals and their consequences, ie commissions, awards and bonuses.
5. Recycle and reorganize
Here we go back a little to the stage in which we list the reasons that produced inactivity.
Politics, work and recovery actions should not be a significant and permanent part of the Sales department’s work. It will be when the company sees that sales errors have occurred and that they have resulted in customer losses.
However, from then on, what should be done is to prevent this from happening. You don’t want to have to recover hundreds of customers every month forever, because you don’t take care of solving the reasons that led them to this condition, or because you have a high churn rate, in the case of “subscription” services.
Dealing with the set of aspects that produce inactivity or even loss, requires recycling people through training and continually qualifying them, reorganizing the company and standard operating procedures, including PDCAs where possible, providing assistance better and more personalized, investing in after-sales and everything else that the preliminary diagnosis pointed out as necessary.
In other words, don’t worry about being the biggest specialist in recovering inactive customers, but in having the fewest number of them, month after month!
Conclusion
The recovery of inactive customers and how to conduct it, is as important as the process of opening new customers to increase sales.
