In my previous blog post I described the current situation:  Now more than ever, your customers are being bombarded by competitive offers and even some of your most loyal customers are actually listening to your competitors.

Your customers are vulnerable.  What can you do about it?

The third thing you need to do is find prospects trading downwards–into your market.

If you’re like most companies, you have prospects that have told you that “you weren’t big enough to support their needs.” They may have sneered at your lack of credentials, capabilities, etc. and ended up going up-market to your larger competitor.  Those prospects you thought were lost are now your best chance for profitable new customers.

These prospects are disillusioned with the lack of service they’re receiving from your larger competitors who’ve slashed staff.  They’ve decided that perhaps they don’t need the most glamorous PR agency–and the decidedly unglamorous fees.  Or perhaps they’ve decided that the biggest, bestest, and fastest computer hardware isn’t actually as necessary as they thought.  They are considering trading downwards, and your goal needs to be to present them with the perfect value for their newly defined equation.

Where do you find these?  You start with all of the lost opportunities in your CRM system where they had budget? but you lost out to a competitor.  You start scanning your competitor’s websites and their PR announcements to find their customer lists. And you call to find out if they are interested in receiving greater value and much greater personal attention than they are receiving now.

In the next post we’ll continue with the last of five things you need to consider as you adjust your Customer Strategy.

In the meantime, if you would like help in identifying and keeping your best customers, as well as revitalizing sales in a challenging economy, you might benefit from our new Customer Snapshot program.