How to view former and existing customers for follow-up

We all know that your relationships with customers don’t end once the first sale is completed. Customers can be a great source of recurring sales and new customers, so why not continue to follow up with customers once the sale is over? By treating former customers well and showing that you care even when they’re not buying you can increase your sales when they are ready to buy again, and use the free word-of-mouth marketing from the people who already love you!

The pipeline report can help you find former and existing customers as well as see who you should touch base with again soon. You can access the pipeline report by mousing over “Reports” in the navigation bar, and selecting the Lead pipeline. The Lead report lists contacts within the sales funnel, and there are a few different filters to help pull exactly the data you’d like to see, located on the left in the “Sort and filter” section.

Please note: the term “Lead” is customizable. Lead is the name of a specific pipeline, and your account may show other pipeline names.

Filter by status. This filter allows you to view certain stages within the sales funnel. By default this report shows only the active statuses in the pipeline, but you can use this filter to view successful sales too. If you’d like to see customers you’ve sold to before, select the appropriate status and apply the filter.

Add a filter. This filter allows you to narrow the data to a particular time range, or based on a specific custom field entry. If you’d like to find former and existing customers to follow up with there are two different date filters you might use to find who you haven’t touched lately.

• Date contact was updated. This option adds a filter based on changes to the contact record (like notes or logged emails), rather than to the Lead specifically. If you’d like to see contacts you haven’t interacted with at all lately, this is the right filter. Simply choose “is on or before” and then a date, maybe a month earlier, to find the successful sales who haven’t been touched recently.
• Date [pipeline] was last updated. This option adds a filter based on changes to the pipeline specifically (like status or priority changes) rather than on the contact. If you’d like to touch base with contacts who bought recently, this is the right filter. Simply choose “is between” and a time range, perhaps the past week, to see what sales were completed recently.

Now that you have a list of your happy customers, get back in touch with them! Send your customers a quick email or give them a call to tell them how much you appreciate their business. Customers will love the personalized touch, and it’s a great reminder of how your business helped them. Happy customers turn into repeat customers and they’ll even start sharing their experience with others to bring you new customers!