What is a customer base and how do you manage it?

A customer base is much more than just a list of contacts, it’s the heart of your sales strategy. 🩶

Whether you’re an entrepreneur, freelancer or head of a sales team, properly managing and developing your customer base can mean the difference between business growth and stagnation.

Yes, you read that right, stagnation… Every company wants to keep growing, doesn’t it?

That’s why, in this article, we explain everything you need to maximize your value to boost your performance. 🚀

Fasten your seatbelts, here we go! (Reading time: about 4 minutes).

What is a customer base?

It’s all the current and potential customers of a company. It’s not just a list of names, like entering the Cannes Film Festival 📋. It’s a whole strategy for understanding who your customers are, how they interact with your company, and what the value is to your business. 👀

Inside, you’ll find:

• 1️⃣ Existing customers (those generating regular income).
• 2️⃣ Customers to be reactivated (those who have not been engaged recently).

There are several segmentation criteria, including :

• 💸 Sales generated.
• 📆 Purchase frequency.
• 💭 Product preferences.
• ✨ Potential to become brand ambassadors.

Why make a customer base?

First of all, it helps you prioritize your resources, let me explain. By identifying 🔎 your most profitable (or high-potential) customers, you’ll be able to focus your efforts on them, and not waste time on less strategic ones. 👀

But that’s not all: it can be a superb loyalty lever!

Okay, but how? 🤔

Well, by analyzing your customers’ behaviors and habits, you can develop tailored offers, anticipate their needs and strengthen their engagement. 🫱🏽‍🫲🏼

The result: satisfied, more loyal customers, who are often more profitable in the long term. ✨

How do you build up a customer base?

It’s all very well knowing the definition, but where do you start? 🤯

Between defining personas, identifying nugget segments and developing your contact base, you don’t know where to start, do you? 👀

Don’t worry, we’re here to guide you! ⬇️

1) How do you define them?

First of all, we need to define who your customers are, and to do that we’re going to use a persona.

To create it, you’ll need all the following information:

• 🌎 Business sector.
• ✨ Position.
• 📔 Missions.
• 💸 Purchasing criteria.
• 🫱🏽‍🫲🏼 Acquisition channels.
• ☀️ Expected solutions.

Using this data, create between 2 and 4 personas. Each persona should include :

• 💬 Fictional first name and a short biography to humanize the profile.
• 💪🏼 Their goals.
• ✋🏼 Their obstacles.
• 🌟 Their expectations.

The result? You’ll get a clear 👁️‍🗨️ picture of your different types of customers and what motivates them. 💪🏼

But that’s not all! Not all customers are at the same level in terms of potential or profitability. So here are a few golden rules: ⤵

• Analyze customer value ⭢ check purchase frequency, sales generated, loyalty.
• Spot opportunities ⭢ some customers or prospects may have strong growth potential (even if they’re still not very active).
• Use an analysis tool (we’ll spoil the rest of the article for you) 🤫.

2) How do you develop a customer portfolio?

Here, we’ll look at 3 types of complementary levers: networking, inbound marketing and social selling.

1️⃣ Networking.

We’ll be looking to establish professional relationships in order to find new business opportunities. To do this, you can :

• 🟣 Participate in professional events (trade shows, conferences, meet-ups).
• 🟣 Join business networks (entrepreneur clubs, chambers of commerce).
• 🟣 Keep in touch with your network (former customers, partners, colleagues).
• 🟣 Focus your efforts on finding new customers on LinkedIn.
• 🟣 Value referrals (encourage satisfied customers to talk about you via discounts or benefits).

2️⃣ Inbound marketing.

We want to attract customers naturally, with quality content. To achieve this, you can :

• Create high-value content (blog posts, guides, case studies).
• Optimize your SEO (identify keywords and optimize your site).
• Use lead magnets (free e-books, webinars, newsletters).
• Automate your communication (personalized email sequences).

3️⃣ Social selling.

We want to leverage professional social networks, like LinkedIn, to identify, engage and convert prospects. Here are a few tips:

• 🔵 Optimize your profile (clear, professional and attractive).
• 🔵 Share relevant content (posts, articles and case studies if relevant).
• 🔵 Join groups and forums (discussions, replies).
• 🔵 Using automation tools (like Waalaxy, to facilitate automated prospecting).

4️⃣ Prospecting.

How can I talk to you about development without talking to you about prospecting strategies?

There are several types of multi-channel strategies:

• Telephone prospecting.
• Targeted cold emailing.
• Prospecting campaign using a prospecting tool (such as Waalaxy).
• Creation of a LinkedIn profile.

A little tip: you can integrate all these actions into a CRM to facilitate data centralization! 📊

3) How to convert prospects

Conversion is one of the most important steps in managing a customer base. To succeed, you need to implement strategies that meet their expectations, without forgetting the move to action. 💥

To do this, you can use promotional offers, let me explain. ⬇️

By offering a discount, you’ll create a sense of urgency in your prospect!

For example, a 15% discount on a first purchase, valid for a limited period. This will motivate the prospect to grab this offer quickly. 👀

Then you have webinars, which are very effective for Saas companies. 🎥
Here, we’ll educate prospects by clearly showing them the benefits of the product. 👀

For example, if your target is sales managers, you’re going to do a webinar on “How to structure a customer base to double your results”. 🤯

But that’s not all. If you want to easily convert your prospects, you can start by segmenting your audience, according to their industry, company size or objectives.

Then, don’t forget to create content tailored to them, such as SEO articles, Ads campaigns or even YouTube videos.

Finally, don’t forget the famous prospecting! On LinkedIn, for example, send an initial message to show your interest in the business sector and propose personalized content (white paper or case study).

Finally, don’t hesitate to send a second message to propose a quick exchange. ⌨️

How to calculate the value of your customer base?

This section will help you identify your most profitable customers. 🔎

To do this, we’ve come up with two favorite methods – here they are! ⬇️

The RFM method

The RFM method is based on three criteria:

• Recency ⭢ when was a customer’s last purchase? ( The more recent the purchase, the more engaged and active the customer).
• Frequency ⭢ How often does this customer make purchases? ( Regular customers have a higher value).
• Amount ⭢ What is the total amount spent by this customer? (Customers who generate more are prioritized).

Next, a score is assigned to each customer for each criterion. For example:

• ⭐️ Recency: 1 to 5 according to the date of the last purchase (1 = old purchase, 5 = very recent).
• ⭐️ Frequency: 1 to 5 depending on the number of purchases over a given period.
• ⭐️ Amount: 1 to 5 according to amount spent.

All you have to do is add up the scores! Customers with a high score are your most valuable customers, while those with a low score are the ones you’ll need to follow up. 👀

Customer lifetime value

Customer Lifetime Value enables you to estimate the total value a customer will bring to your company over the entire duration of their business relationship. Yes, we’re looking into the future here. 🛸

Here’s the formula! ⬇️

Once you’ve made your calculations, you’ll be able to tailor your investments to retain customers with a high CLV. 👀

Which software to manage a customer base?

Nowadays, using Excel to manage a customer portfolio is a complex task. That’s why we’ve developed dedicated software to analyze, structure and fully exploit your customer database!

I won’t say anymore, let’s discover these solutions together. 👀

1) CRM for centralized customer data

First of all, let’s stop talking in acronyms. A CRM stands for Customer RelationShip Management, in other words, a tool for centralizing and structuring information about your customers.

With it, you’ll be able to record and organize data such as :

• Customer contact details.
• Purchase history.
• Customer preferences.
• Past communications (emails, calls, appointments).

But that’s not all, you’ll also be able to segment your customer base according to criteria you define, such as loyal customers, inactive or hot prospects.

Finally, you can schedule reminders, send targeted email campaigns or plan reminders, all efficiently and automatically. 🪄

There are a multitude of CRMs on the market, so it’s up to you to choose the one best suited to your needs. 😇

2) Prospecting tool to create or develop a customer base

We mentioned the prospecting tool earlier in this article! Among other things, it allows you to:

• 🔎 Identify new prospects.
• 🫱🏽‍🫲🏼 Engage them effectively.
• 💬 Centralize information to turn them into customers.

For this, we recommend Waalaxy, which helps you identify the right contacts and then launch automated outreach campaigns, combining, for example, LinkedIn messages and Emails, with scheduled follow-ups! ✈️

Using it, you can extract your prospect database as a CSV file, then integrate it into a CRM for centralized management.

Why? 🤔

Well, to easily update information, such as adding new prospects, categorizing according to sales cycle, or updating existing data.

If you want to use Waalaxy to develop your customer base, go here! ⬇️

How about a recap?

As you can see, every customer and every prospect is an opportunity to create value and build a lasting relationship.

Personalization, listening and analysis are the 3 golden rules ⭐️ to transform your contacts into trusted partners.

Finally, a customer portfolio can’t be measured by numbers alone. 🔢

A satisfied customer today is the best ambassador for tomorrow. 🚀

What are the 3 steps to analyzing your customer base?

Customer base analysis is based on 3 principles:

• 1️⃣ Segment your customer base: classify your customers according to precise criteria.
• 2️⃣ Measure profitability: evaluate the profitability of each segment.
• 3️⃣ Identify actions to be taken: retain profitable customers, follow-up on inactive customers.

By doing this, you’ll have a clear, structured vision of your customer base. 👀

How do you structure a customer portfolio?

Having a customer base is great, but having a tidy customer base is better! 👀 Here’s our advice:

• 🔵 Define clear categories (categories of importance, life cycle, sectors or segments).
• 🟣 Create detailed customer records (full contact details, purchasing history and behavior, specific preferences).
• 🔵 Set up tracking KPIs (lead conversion rate, average value per customer, time since last interaction.

What’s a customer base manager?

It’s a professional or dedicated tool used to monitor and optimize a company’s customer relationships. Let’s find out the differences! ⬇️

1️⃣ The role of the human manager.

His main objective is to establish and maintain a solid relationship with customers. His missions are :

• Analyze the customer base.
• Ensure customer follow-up.
• Retain existing customers.
• Cross-sell.

2️⃣ The role of a management tool (CRM type).

These tools automate certain tasks and offer a complete view of interactions with each customer:

• Track purchase and interaction history.
• Prioritize customers according to their potential or commitment.
• Automate follow-ups and loyalty campaigns.

Now you know all about customer base. See you soon! 🌟