The importance of getting repeat customers

Let us say you went to a restaurant for dinner, and then you never went back there for months. Not because you did not like the food but because the restaurant never reminded you of its existence. It is a competitive world, and once a customer drops in, it is wise to keep them coming back. This is true of so many local services that it is surprising that they do not devote more time and effort to building these relationships.

Restaurants that do this well announce a new menu or a food festival frequently. They do not send the templated emails that say ‘We’re missing you’ or some such sentiment. There is enough ‘newness’ on the menu to ensure that customers make a note and pay another visit. Another way is to appeal to a narrower but committed set of customers, like pet-friendly restaurants. 

B2B businesses can adopt strategies to get repeat customers as well. But they need to clearly fit into the buying cycles of their customers, so that they get repeat orders on a regular basis. Insurance businesses have mastered this to a large extent. And it works perfectly for small trading companies, if they define their niches well.

How equipment and trading rentals can benefit from HubSpot

These are sectors where the potential for repeat business is high. And a company had posted a query on the HubSpot Community: We sell construction equipment and take trades. At times, we get requests for equipment that we do not have but may get in on trade in the future. So, I need a way to keep those listed in front of us.

The approved solution by Will Lench: One way you could do it is by using properties. The first would be a broad category of products being requested. The second would be a single line text field. You could then run a report for deals that have been lost due to equipment that you do not sell and have 2 tables. The first shows the category of equipment being requested, and the second shows other equipment within that category.

Upselling or cross selling to existing customers is a great idea. If you are in a market where customers must buy or rent the same product, it makes sense to set up systems to lock in the revenue

To expand the potential, Jacob Olle had this to offer: If you have a property that captures equipment of interest (what the contact wants/is buying), you could use that to create equipment-specific lists. When you then get a specific piece of equipment as a trade-in, you will easily be able to find the contacts who said they were interested.

If you see this happen often, even if it is just for a few pieces of equipment, you could also create your own "waiting list" with a form that a contact can fill out to be notified of future availability. You could create a list from that form or use a general form with that equipment of interest property that would allow the user to select all pieces of equipment that they would like to hear about. 

This all comes down to storing the information in a standardized, easily segmented way (or getting that into place if it does not exist today).

Tracking lifecycles for repeat customers

One of the tricky issues facing companies using HubSpot was how to handle existing customers who made a repeat inquiry and bought the product again. It was okay when they went through the funnel the first time. The query was about whether the lifecycle property should be modified the second or third time they inquired because they temporarily moved from an existing customer to a fresh lead.

Figuring out how to benefit from repeat purchases and increasing the percentage of customers is a solid way to increase revenue without investing heavily in sales to first time customers

This was how Professor Kyle Jepson of HubSpot suggested it could be managed: Changing the lifecycle stage is probably going to cause some confusion. Let us look at some other options:

Lead Status

It is worth noting that the options in the Lead Status property can be customized. If you are using the default options, it would make sense to leave the Lifecycle Status as "Customer" and then change the Lead Status to "Open Deal." That way, you can easily generate a list of all customers who are re-ordering. This is probably the best option.

If you have customized your lead statuses (or if you want to customize them), you could have an option specifically for customers who are reordering. You could call it something like "re-order" or "upsell," or whatever makes the most sense to your team.

There is one other option I should mention as well:

Deal Type

There is a deal property called deal type that has two options: "new business" and "existing business." This enables your sales team to label their deals based on whether they are with new customers or existing customers.

The advantage here is that this lets you create a list of deals that represent re-orders. The previous two options will let you get a list of customers who are re-ordering, but using Deal Type lets you see a list of the actual deals. So, if that is what you are looking for, this would be the way to do it.

Talk to our consultants at BlueOshan to focus on getting repeat customers. We will structure your funnel and reporting structure to ensure that you can monitor how much business is generated from repeat purchases. We will ask probing questions, understand your sales cycle, and help set up everything that goes out on a schedule, from email sequences to report generation.

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BlueOshan is a HubSpot Diamond -Tier Solutions Partner. Delivering worldwide from India