Starting with how you generate inquiries through the challenging hand-off and follow-up by your sales force, and most importantly how you measure the results, this ”discipline” sees more wasted money, more missed opportunities, and more downright mistakes than any other area in business-to-business (B2B) marketing and sales.

Now that some of the more traditional direct mail disciplines (multivariate testing, A/B splits) are being used on the Internet (web design, email marketing, search engine marketing, pay-per-click advertising, landing page optimization, social media, web 2.0), it has made the the demand generation and management process more complex and more difficult than ever. 

Why Lead Generation is so important

But this really presents businesses the greatest opportunity for three reasons:

1. There is always room for improvement – And, the return on investment from improving your lead generation program is usually well worth the the time and effort. 
2. You can build a competitive advantage – in most industries your competition is probably managing their lead generation and nurturing process at the same level you are, or worse.  Your efforts can help you develop a competitive advantage and win market share from your competitors. 
3. You can make more effective use of your budget–when you measure your results, you can put your money where it’s working the best, and align your budget to achieve strategic objectives.

The purpose of this series of blog posts is to outline a solid process, and offer some tips and techniques that, when applied to your business’s sales and marketing process, it will turn your lead generation program from mediocre into a source of pride for your organization.

Next: “B2B Lead Generation and Nurturing: An Overview“

Customer Winbacks

Emphatically “Yes”!

There are lots of reasons, other than the economy, why you are losing customers.

Customers could’ve been frustrated by delays, or aggravated by one bad experience. They could be annoyed by lack of response from you, or seduced away by your competition.

The point is: “If you are losing customers—do you know why?”

There’s a big difference between customers who are gone and customers you can win back. Unfortunately, most sales managers and salespeople don’t make that distinction.

And many executives neglect to direct their managers to ferret out the reasons why customers are defecting. Why? In the rush to get new business—we ignore lost business—even though in many cases the closing ratio for winning back lost customers can be much higher than the ratio for new business. And the reasons for customer defection are vitally important.

A customer win-back program is valuable for three main reasons (1) you win back “lost” revenue (2) you can uncover potential weaknesses in your organization, and (3) you can discover potential threats from the competition.

4 Steps to Winback Success

Here are some ideas for creating your own customer win-back program:

1. Put a senior manager or director in charge
You can’t expect a junion person to handle this job. A senior manager or executive is truly representing and speaking for the company. Priority number one is to visit the client in a face-to-face meeting, and get to the root of ‘what went wrong’. Listen intently, take notes, use your active listening skills to show the client you’re listening to them.

2. Track your losses and your win-backs
You need to establish a system for identifying lost business and recovered business. Is a lost customer someone who hasn’t bought from you in a month, in six-months, in a year? It’s different from business to business. But if you’re not measuring your lost customers, you’re not managing your customers very well. Identifying which customers who’s active and who’s inactive is vital for establishing and running a successful win-back program.

3. Re-establish the lines of communication
Your might ask for a meeting with top management, send a personalized letter from the CEO, or ask for a new new needs-analysis meeting. This all flows from the first face-to-face meeting where you discover the problem and refine your approach.

4. Document Your Successes
Customer Win-backs is a process—and with practice it should be a repeatable one. It may take you ten steps instead of the previous three, but once you’ve won back several customers, you’ll begin to see patterns that you can use to reduce customer attrition. The whole process should help you garner valuable information to help you run your business better.

Next time you speak with your customer ask: “What result are you looking for in (the next period of time) that will make you continue to do business with us?” Knowing these expectations makes your life much easier and increases your chances of retaining that client.

Winning back customers is not for the meek of heart. There may be some confrontation, and you will undoubtedly hear things you don’t want to hear. However, it’s hard to correct a problem you’re not willing to discuss. At the very least you’ll discover the weaknesses in your organization that caused your customers to defect in the first place.

Moving forward it would be wise to recall Ben Franklin’s aphorism that “An Ounce of Prevention is worth a Pound of Cure.” Manage your customer’s expectations at the beginning of the relationship, not the end.

Happy Win-backs!