Customer WinBack Delivers 3X Faster Sales

Why’s it so fast?  

Because with customer winback, much of the time-intensive sales work has already been done

Think of a typical sales cycle. 

First you need to source prospects, then you need to engage them.

Then you need to qualify them, build relationships, educate them on your brand, educate them on your product and convert them into customers.

That’s a lot of work and it takes a lot of time.

But selling to lost customers is way faster because so much of that time consuming work has already been done.

So let’s blow it out.

The first reason why selling to lost customers is so much faster is you don't need to spend time sourcing good prospects, they're already in your CRM. 

All you need to do is pull them out. 

This is basically instant pipeline.

Now that you’ve got this new sales pipeline, it’s time to engage.  

With winback engagement is fast because your lost customers already know you and will engage with just a few touches. 

With new prospects, it’s the exact opposite.  

They don’t know you. You’re a stranger.  

Engagement takes a lot longer because they need to get familiar with you before they’ll feel comfortable having a conversation. 

Jeb Blount’s research backs up this point.  

Jeb is one of America’s top sales leaders and his research, and the research of others, shows that it only takes 1-3 touches to engage a lost customer but it takes dozens of touches with a cold prospect.  

So with winback we save a lot of time in the engagement phase of a sale and that’s Reason #2 why sales cycles are shorter with winback. 

We also need to qualify our prospects.

That takes time with new prospects, but it takes zero time with lost customers because they’re already qualified.

They had a need for your product in the past and probably still have that need now or will have it again in the future. 

That’s been my experience with thousands of lost customers and there’s one more important point to make.

Lost customers aren’t just qualified prospects, they’re highly qualified prospects because at one time they chose you above all your competitors.  

There was something that made you special.  Maybe it was a feature of your product, maybe it was your positioning or maybe it was your messaging.

But whatever separated you from the pack before will make you very appealing now and that makes your lost customers very qualified prospects.

So Reason #3 why sales cycles are shorter with customer winback is that you don’t need to spend time qualifying prospects. 

The next step in the sales cycle is building relationships and creating trust.  Sales is all about relationships and no sale happens without trust.

This takes time, sometimes a lot of time.  

But with lost customers you don’t need to build relationships and create trust.  That work has already been done. 

And that’s a massive time saver.  

Now you may need to re-awaken some of your past relationships, but that takes a fraction of the time that it takes to build a relationship from scratch.

Also, you won’t be able to build a relationship and create trust with all your new prospects.  You’ll spin your wheels with a lot of them and that costs time. 

But with lost customers, you’ve already successfully made it through the relationship/trust maze.

So Reason #4 why sales cycles are shorter with customer winback is you don’t need to spend time building relationships and creating trust. 

Another time-consuming part of the sales process is educating prospects on your brand and product. 

You don’t need to do any of this work with lost customers because they already know your brand and they know your product very well because they’ve used it. 

You’ve both been through the whole process before and it’s always a lot quicker the second time around. 

You have a level of trust and know each other, and that really greases the closing wheels.

You’re also an approved vendor and have gone through procurement and that saves a ton of time.

You might also have a Master Service Agreement.  If it’s still in effect, you’ll save more time and even if it’s not in effect, you’ll save a lot of time since you’ve already gone through the whole negotiation process before and came to an agreement.

Also, if you’re in tech and dealing with a large company you’ll have to deal with security protocols.  That can take months to complete, but with a winback customer you’ve already gone through their entire security process. 

So with customer winback, closing is so much faster because you’ve already been through the whole process before and have scaled all the big hurdles.

It's almost like you’re starting the close on third base.

Closing isn’t only faster, it’s more likely to happen.  

That's because the win rate for selling to lost customers is 5X better than with new prospects.

The win rate is so high because you have 3 big sales advantages.  Trust, knowledge and relationships. 

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

You also know a lot about them and this knowledge allows you to create very personalized messaging and highly targeted offers.

Lastly, you have relationships with your lost customers and many of them will tell you exactly what it’ll take to win their business back.

These are three powerful sales advantages you just don’t have with new prospects. 

And I’ll share one more point since we just talked about it.

It can take months and months to close a large deal because you need to become an approved vendor, negotiate the contract, get security protocols in place and on and on.  During that time the excitement for the deal could wither and the deal could get put on the back burner or even die.

But with customer winback all those hurdles have already been scaled to one degree or another and that means things move really fast and the excitement for the deal stays high. 

Selling to lost customers is 3X faster than selling to new prospects because most of the sales work has already been done.

You already have qualified leads, you already have relationships, your prospects have already been educated on your product and closing is way faster.

And sales don’t only happen faster, the win rate is also higher with lost customers and that should be music to the ears of anyone who’s responsible for revenue.