Know-How Exchange : Strategy

Ask your clients why they continue to choose you. That's their key value proposition.

Ask them what else you can do for them - what products or services would further help them. You don't have to provide these, but could fusion market with other firms that would offer them.

you need to consider a few of these options...

1) inventory space - your clients are short of space and their management teams dont like them to build up stocks. This would be an area of attack.

2) regular repeatable business takes the need for keeping track of levels and volumes of janitorial products particularly. Key in on this..

3) anticipating needs puts your flier on top of the stack. Many of these people operate on a stack system.

I have studied this industry and could provide detailed help.

Do you have recurring contracts with any of these clients? It seems that they need supplies that are constantly consumed. Do you have a way that they can get supply X delievered every month/every other month? This can lock a customer in. You could offer a discount it they committ to a year of supplies. This saves them time as they do not need to constantly re-order. Be sure to pitch it in that regard that you are saving them valuable time and money by signing up for your monthly supply service.

Do you have a catalog of all the supplies you offer, be it in print or on the web. You want to slip these in every once in awhile to remind people that you have many of the items they are looking for.

Hope this helps,
Mike

A thought of communicating with current customers and when they are needing to place the replenishing order.

Print special stickers to put on the cartons of the products you provide that make it easy for them to re-order the same thing.

A generic sticker would have your company name, phone number, URL etc and state - re-order your products here.

Another option is a laser printed sticker to match the specific order (or you could hand write it if you don't have the technology for laser printing). Put the company name and contact info, then include order information such as: Date, size(Quantity) of order ounces, product order codes etc. and if you have it in the system, make each product a simple (re-order number) they call or email you a code that makes it easy for you to send them the same order again.

If you don't want to print designed stickers, mailing labels with a color printer will do the trick (depending on your size of company and number of orders you process).

Keeping your company name and contact and the re-order easy should prompt a repeat purchase.

The other option is to use stickers on the packaging to promote re-peat purchase with promotional periods. Like if they buy Mops, have an offer for soaps/detergents at a case pricing and the easy order number for them call in.

Cross selling can prompt an interim purchase. Look over your current orders and see what is being purchased together and if the order does not include an item, place a sticker for that item on the order when it goes out.

Why Stickers? They don't get tossed when the box is opened and they stay on the carton until the last item is used - therefore you are identified with the products through the life cycles of the order.

Good Luck.

Sounds like you might be ready for a move from commodity sales to Consultative Selling.

By all means keep sending flyers, but maybe it's worth investing time with larger clients, not just to thank them for the business they are routinely giving you, but also to talk with them about their needs, so you can present appropriate products, services and turnkey solutions to meet those needs.

Hope that helps.

ChrisB