Are you tending your garden? I know it’s February and you’re still focused on first-​of-​the-​year goals and winning new business with gusto, but the seeds you planted in 2015 need nurturing too. And those old-​vine clients might need transplanting or larger soil beds to reach their full potential. Have you checked to see if your faithful flowers are in growth mode? With simply a bit of fertilizer, you could encourage new blooms on old stems.

Take a moment to turn your focus toward some older accounts. And while you’re digging up the past, employ some tried-​and-​true techniques. Maybe even devote this entire morning to watering your garden with a twist of zest and zeal for upselling! “Conversations these days tend to forget these basics and focus instead on new-​age, shiny fixes,” Mo Yehia writes in StreetFightMag. So, “Here are some essential sales basics – goodies but oldies, crucial but not revolutionary,” he recommends weaving back into your sales style and customer retention strategy. I personally think you can use these tips to get more out of stagnant accounts that might just be begging for a little attention and nourishment.

Just remember that non-​traditional sales (social selling, local engagement, multi-​channel drip campaigns) are crucial to servicing your accounts too. “The devil is in the details: The tone of a subject line, timing of a phone call, recency of the point of contact, marketing cadence, and value proposition positioning,” Yehia writes, are still supremely important to growing your sales garden.

1. Engage across channels
   Your SMB clients are busy and constantly focused on multiple business decisions in any given minute. “Run a combination of traditional – email, physical mail, phone call, in-​person visit – and less traditional – Facebook messages, Yelp direct messages, Tweets,” Yehia suggests. And one of these touches could be the one that spurs the growth!
2. Engage often
   Fill your calendar with reminders so you don’t leave clients blowing in the wind.
3. Personalize outreach
   Yehia recommends tailoring your outbound communications and saying things like:

• “you’re a women’s boutique but don’t currently use eCommerce…,” or
• “you’re in the bottom quartile of poorest rated plumbers in SEA,” or
• “we noticed that you advertise on Yelp…,” or
• “it looks like you promote monthly on Facebook…,” or
• “you posted 100+ times in the past year but haven’t posted in 10 weeks…”