5X Better Win Rate with Customer WinBack

Trust, knowledge and relationships drive win rates.

They’re huge sales advantages.

If you have 1 or 2 of one of them your win rate goes way up.

If you have all 3, win rates spike.

You have all 3 advantages with customer winback.

And that’s why the win rate is 5X better than for selling to new prospects. (Marketing Metrics/Ipsos Loyalty)

The first sales advantage you have when you sell to your lost customers is trust.

Trust is at the foundation of every sale. Without trust there is no sale and you already have an existing level of trust with your lost customers.

They know you, they’ve seen you in action, and they’ve trusted you enough to buy from you.

Starting a sale with an existing level of trust is a huge advantage that you just don’t have with new prospects and it’s the first reason why the win rate is so high with customer winback.

Whoever knows the customer best wins. And you know a lot about your lost customers.

You know who the decision makers are and what’s important to them.

You know how they buy, when the buying window opens and what they need.

All this intel is pure gold. 

It gives you the fodder you need to create hyper-relevant messaging and really compelling offers and that really drives up win rates.

You don’t have anything like this with new prospects.

All you know is what you get online and from 3rd party data.

First hand customer knowledge is a huge sales advantage and it’s the second big sales advantage you get with winback. It’s also one more reason why the win rate for selling to lost customers is so high.

The last big sales advantage is relationships.

The relationships you have with your lost customers makes winning so much easier.

You know them and they know you, and this is a sales advantage you just don’t have with new prospects.

The first thing it does is it makes engagement easier.

Jeb Blount’s research in his bestseller Fanatical Prospecting shows that it only takes 1-3 touches to engage a lost customer. Meanwhile, it takes dozens to engage a cold prospect.

But relationships deliver an even bigger sales advantage.

Many of your lost customers will literally tell you exactly what you need to do to win their business back.

They’ll tell you where you fell short and what need to do to fix any issues. 

And nothing greases the sales wheels faster than knowing exactly what a prospect is looking for.

Jill Griffin (a leading loyalty expert and the author of Customer WinBack) commissioned a study that found about 1/3 of lost customers will tell you exactly how to win their business back.

In the Customer WinBack Benchmark Study, Jill tells the story of losing their Honda account and how the client helped them with the winback.

It was a big client and one they couldn’t afford to lose.

Jill had her top salesperson reach out to their contact at Honda and asked how they could win back their business.

Honda let them know exactly what was needed. Jill’s team made the changes and 3 months later the account was won back.

This was a fiercely competitive market and Honda had a lot of other vendors to choose from.

But Jill's team already had their trust, existing relationships and knew exactly what the client needed.

The sales advantages that trust, relationships and customer knowledge offer are massive. 

They give you a huge leg up and make winning so much easier, even in highly competitive markets.

You’ve invested a lot of time, money and effort to create those relationships and put yourself in the position for a high probability win.

Don't waste that investment and squander those winback sales.

Reach out to your lost customers and start winning that business back.

Sales is a trust game and you already have a level of trust with your lost customers.

You also have deeper customer knowledge and that means you can create more personalized messaging and highly targeted offers.

You also have relationships with your lost customers.  This makes engagement much easier and more importantly, many of your contacts will tell you everything you need to know to win their business back.