In the early stages of bringing a new client on board, a lot of effort is made to get to know them. But as the relationship develops and interactions become ‘business as usual’, the understanding of a client’s current issues can become outdated. Their circumstances, needs, challenges and goals may change without you knowing. Being out of the loop means you miss sales opportunities with your existing clients or make assumptions they would not buy a service that you offer.

Here are three pieces of valuable information in ‘My Insights’ from your ClientInsights campaigns that can help you identify opportunities for new services in your client base.

HOW INDIVIDUAL CLIENTS RATE THEIR OWN BUSINESS AS IT RELATES TO A PARTICULAR ISSUE

The results from ClientInsights give you an overview of your clients’ businesses focused around an issue that you could solve with a specific service offering. The self-evaluation of the targeted questionnaire allows clients to give their honest feedback without it being overwhelming to complete.

Individual responses are recorded in My Insights as they come in from your campaigns. You and your team can see how each client has rated their own business at each question, and use that information to craft an appropriate sales opportunity for that service.

TRENDS IN CLIENT GROUPS

Aggregate responses from a group of clients can reveal useful information upon which you can base marketing campaigns. Similar to the survey you might receive after attending an event, the organizers are interested in how most people enjoyed or received value from the event. Two glowing reviews are less indicative of the event’s overall success if 40% of attendees gave poor ratings.

You can view a summary report of responses with each ClientInsights campaign. This combines answers from all participants to show you the spectrum of answers for each question. The summary report is particularly useful if you have sent your campaign to a segment of your clients as the insights are focused on the attributes of that segment.

The below charts come from a Budgeting and Cash Flow Forecasting template campaign to a segmented business group in the manufacturing industry. Although it shows most of the participants as confident about their cash resources, there is a split between those who look at key differences between their forecast and their actual performance, and those who do not.

Having this information allows you to talk intelligently with your clients. In this case, the accounting business conducting the campaign contacted each client who had ‘weak’ responses, discussing the value of a cash flow forecasting workshop and quarterly reviews comparing their actual performance. By having this data, the accounting business could advise those clients they were below the average for clients in the same industry of a similar business size in terms of proactively managing cash flow. As you can imagine, they were far more successful in selling a new service to an existing group of clients than if they just asked the question, “Do you think you need budgeting and cash flow forecasting services?”

INTEREST IN A PRODUCT OR SERVICE

A high number of responses means you have a good portion of clients who have a need or propensity to buy this service from you. We worked with a firm that expressed surprise at the high number of clients showing interest in their Business Continuity Planning service after sending out their first campaign, even though they had always thought it would be well received by their clients.

ClientInsights also helps you with prioritization by assigning a score to each client depending on how they responded to the questions. Of course, some will not respond at all, and some will not be interested, but you now know that before having to pick up the phone, resulting in time saved and more targeted lead generation.

A low number of responses is not a cause for alarm, but it does mean more work needs to be done. Complementing the survey with a newsletter and relevant article to the same client group can be an effective way to communicate the importance or value of this service for them. Mix up the newsletter with text articles and videos to make sure you are reaching your audience. Clients are 50% more likely to try new products from a business they have already purchased from, so use the insight from this campaign to test another product or service that may get more interest from your clients.

COMPLETING THE PICTURE

The best thing thing you can do to strengthen your client relationships is to create two-way communication, where you regularly connect with relevant and expert information, and clients can give you their feedback. Clients are often happier to share with you than you may have thought, and all this data adds up to a more complete picture about their business and specifically how your firm can help them improve it.