Question: What is the easiest way to grow your profitable sales?
Answers: Sell more to your current customers.

Last year, I sat with a sales force of fifteen and asked them to list their top three growth customers, which I defined as someone who was purchasing at least $100,000 in printing from them and had at least another $100,000 in additional work available that fit the plant. This was an important question, since the printer had just moved to a new facility and had the added capabilities to increase sales from $30 million to $50 million without moving again.

When each of the sales people had completed their list, I asked them to circle the largest of the three opportunities. We put each of their largest potential growth opportunities on the board, and the total growth potential of those fifteen customers was an amazing $47 million. In other words, if those sales people could just secure the work they were qualified to print from their #1 potential growth customer, the plant would not be able to service it all at their new location.

Your company's current customer list is the least expensive resource for building new sales. Think about it. They know you. They trust you. They are comfortable with your people. Do you know who your largest potential growth customers are? If so, are you executing a plan to double sales with them? What would it mean to your total sales if you could?

Don't just read these questions as hypothetical situations. Get out your sales numbers and start asking some important questions of yourself and your salespeople. Once you have identified these valuable new sales resources, here is what you can do to double your work with your largest potential growth customers within two years.

In order to secure additional sales from a current customer you must execute a plan to do three things:

· Tell these customers that you want to double your sales with them and that your team of employees is willing and eager to do whatever it takes to make that happen.
· Tell these people exactly what you are going to do for them to make doubling their sales with your firm a worthwhile venture.
· Execute a plan that makes also ensures that their decision is a good business decision.

Here is a list of sales activities you can carry out to capture growth in your numbers:

· Give the group a name. Call them the "Big Twenty", or whatever other name gives them precedence. This will both make them feel special and alert your own employees of the importance that this client holds.
· Make a "Bible" of the quality specifications that this client requires in each department of your company. Put a copy in customer service, pre-press, the pressroom, the bindery and so on.
· Put important information like register tolerances and logo restrictions in pre-press and the pressroom.
· Put a quality assurance person in charge of inspecting every job that these customers buy before it goes out the door. Get them to hand-pick samples.
· Hold a quarterly seminar/meeting for these customers and let them bring pertinent employees. I like breakfast seminars because they are less expensive and can be done in-house or at a near by hotel. Get your paper suppliers and other you partner with to give updates on the state of the industries that are effecting your customers. If you have invested in new technology like computer-to-plate or digital printing, focus your seminars on these topics and educate your customers about how to use this new technology to make money and save money.
· Have a social gathering at least twice a year. Take them as a group to a sporting event or just take them bowling. Invite your employees who work with them so that they get the chance to deepen relationships.
· Have the president of your company commit to having lunch with one of these important customers every week. This opens the lines of communications and makes the customer understand how important they are to your company's success.
· Develop a web site just for these customers. Let them send files through it and keep track of their inventory there.
· Institute a volume rebate program tied directly to your goal of doubling sales with this group.
· Do a print audit of all these customer needs and make suggestions to them on how to make money and save money for them even if you don't provide the printing. Offer to handle all of their printing needs if it makes their life easier.
· Constantly brainstorm as a company on how to improve the quality and service your company provides for these people.

The bottom line of this program is spelled V-A-L-U-E. Create value for your most important customers all the time and the dividends will be immense. Put someone in charge of the program and make this person's activities part of your regular management review of how things are going in your company. Using this system, you can turn all of your customers into accounts in a measurable amount of time.