Five Ways To Regain Lost Business

Lost customers are not necessarily lost forever. If you treat past customers as new prospects, you may regain their business.
Start by finding out why customers left in the first place. Here are five steps that may help you get the business back:
* Learn the real reason the customer left. Was it a pricing issue, a service issue, a quality issue? Could you have shown a lack of interest in keeping the business or exhibited some other major mistake?
* Be willing to start selling again as if the customer is now a new prospect.
* Put as much effort into regaining the business as you did to get it.
* Stay in touch with previous customers by placing them in your active file.
* Have a specific strategy for dealing with lost business.
Source: Adapted from “91 Mistakes Smart Salespeople Make,” by Tim Connor.