By Eric Rabinowitz, CEO, Nurture Marketing

What could be better than cloning your best clients into new, additional clients?

Maybe it was luck that brought you and your favorite B2B customers together. But you shouldn’t wait for lightning to strike twice to secure others just like them.

Be proactive and seek out prospects that might measure up to your current dream clients. But don’t guess. Analyze your current favorites to determine which factors give them that gold-star status. Whatever makes your best clients the greatest should be the criteria you use to find your next best customer.

Your initial search could also help launch Account-Based Marketing (ABM) initiatives to identify and target new prospects by exploring organizations linked to an already preferred customer, such as another division or brand under the corporate umbrella.

With just a flip chart, stickies, and some objective feedback, you can clone your best clients using this straightforward methodology that we’ve developed at Nurture Marketing:

1. Create a cross-functional team that includes members with customer contact. Sales, marketing, management, customer support, and even accounting employees should be considered. Keep the team to 10 members or less.
2. On a flip chart, have the team list companies that they believe are your best clients, past and present. At this stage of the process there are no wrong answers, and people should be encouraged to share the name of a client based on feelings and personal preferences. No comments should be permitted.
3. Give each member of the functional team 10 colored stickies to be used for voting. Each member should be able to vote for 1 to 10 clients. If they vote for 1 client, the team member places all 10 stickies next to a single client’s name, and they may then vote for up to 9 additional clients. 10 votes are all they get, so they must choose carefully.
4. Once the voting is completed, the facilitator chooses the top 5 vote-getters.
5. Going through each “winning” client, the team discusses why each client is great. Are they high revenue? Low maintenance? Do you have a trusted advisor? Local? Interesting work? Growth potential? There are no wrong reasons. Your job is to create a profile of a great client to which you can compare your future prospects.

When looking through your prospects, start to think about those benchmarks that most closely match the “greatest” profile. How are they measuring up? Could the prospect become a dream client?

Even after they become a client, regroup and discuss what you need to do to make them better. All clients can’t be great, but there is no reason why every client can’t be greater.

On a normal day, there are many variables in business that we can’t control. Now it may seem we have even less control during the present pandemic. But what you can control is the type of client that will be more likely to appreciate your expertise and how you deliver for them. Go find them.

This is the latest in a series of articles by Nurture Marketing to help you develop and grow trusted relationships with prospects and customer through digital engagement.

Please contact us to learn more about our solutions for developing compelling B2B marketing and sales content for the Partner Channel, including case studies and more. You may reach us by calling (732) 636-1001, Extension 27, or by visiting the CONTACT PAGE of our website.