PALO ALTO, Calif., Oct. 27, 2020 /PRNewswire/ — “Focus on retaining, delighting and expanding your current customers because delighted customers buy more,” is the main message of a new book from a Silicon Valley best-selling author and speaker who shares with c-suite and sales executives proven strategies to accelerate their company’s top (revenue) and bottom (profit) line, regardless of industry or size of company.

Book Cover
Patty Watkins

InLand and EXPAND: 6 Simple Strategies to Grow Your Company’s Top and Bottom Line, ($20, Indie Books International, October 2020) author Patricia Watkins shares the benefits of executing a blueprint of six battle-tested, proven strategies, validated by a wealth of research and real-life experiences.

“Most companies attempt to grow sales by winning new customers,” says Watkins. “That’s one way, but it’s the most difficult. Instead, increasing sales to existing customers is the fastest, most cost-effective way. Loyal, delighted customers are the foundation for expanding revenues.”

Watkins has more than 25 years of strategy, sales, direct, channel, alliance and marketing experience in Silicon Valley at start-ups and Fortune 500 companies. She has led start-up teams to over $800 million in annual sales and transformed several teams from worst to first.   

The book discusses how to create an extraordinary customer experience, increase customer retention, and increase sales based on expansion strategies. One of the six strategies is promotions. “Offering promotions are effective upsell and cross-sell opportunities to keep your customer consistently reminded of your solutions,” says Watkins.

Below is a list excerpted from the book of ten examples of effective promotions:

Try It/Buy It Promotions: With this type of promotion, you are offering your customer the ability to try your solution before purchasing it. You want to have a relatively easy implementation, where the customer can try your solution with minimal capital and human resources required to test the solution.

Free Trials Or Fremiums: You mightconsider offering a free limited-feature solution or fremium—that is, a pricing strategy where a product (typically software) or service is provided at no charge. The fremium creates awareness for the upgraded solution.

Holiday Promotions: Holidays are especially important for retailers. For example, your potential customer might need extra compute power to support Black Friday and Cyber Monday transaction levels.

Trade-In Promotions: This type of promotion offers a trade-in for older solutions to the latest version. Trade-ins are a great way to upgrade your base and also to remove some of the concerns of life-cycle management as solutions age.

Price Match Promise: Price match guarantees offerto meet the price of any competitor. Best Buy and Walmart are two examples of retailers that offer this type of promotion.

Free Shipping and Free Returns: Not tacking on additional shipping fees, and making purchases easy to exchange or return, provide a positive customer experience and lower the risk in their purchase decision.

Bundle Promotions: You might consider bundling two or more of your offers that complement each other at a lower price point than selling them separately, creating an incentive for the customer to buy more.

Discounts: You might promote a discount during certain periods, or an exclusive discount on certain solutions, to speed up the products’ or solutions’ adoption or to clear the shelves to make room for new inventory.

Group Discounts: You might want to offer local companies, or members of certain associations, a discount on your solutions. Think about the discount some hotels offer to AAA members.

Buy One, Get One Free Or At A Special Discount: This type of promotion is often used with commodity solutions, B2C, B2B, and user-based licenses. This promotion can be a great way to offer a new solution, with a discount, that creates a compelling event.

Watkins’ timely and practical guide doesn’t just deliver the strategies, robust-in depth research and real-life examples, it provides a pragmatic, step-by-step guide, a rich array of techniques, templates and checklists, that set her book apart from other sales management books.

About Indie Books International

Indie Books International (www.indiebooksintl.com) was founded in 2014 in Oceanside, California by two bestselling business authors. Since then, the company has released more than 125 titles. Similar to indie film companies and indie music labels, its mission is to serve as an independent publishing alternative for business thought leaders.

CONTACT:  Henry DeVries, 619-540-3031, [email protected]

SOURCE Patty Watkins