It’s STILL January, and nearly everyone—people and businesses—is feeling a productivity sag and a cash flow squeeze. I get it, and this month, I am serving you a few easy-to-do nuggets of continuous improvement with a side order of Just DO it!

I promise you. They all work. I’ve used them myself, as have my clients.

Gentle Reminder

Continuous improvement is sometimes referred to as continual improvement. Truly, it is the ongoing process of improving products, services, and processes. It may not be the most glamorous task, but when done even partly correctly, it is guaranteed to work, elevate your business, and boost your metrics. The journey of continuous improvement is not just about the destination. It is also about the transformations you find and steer and the growth you watch bloom from it all.

The only caveat is that it is NOT immediate or instantaneous. It does take time. However, once started and anchored into the business, continuous improvement vastly shortens the upward trajectory of the metrics we salivate for.

Last week, we covered your DDC. Digital Decluttering Cleanse.

This week, it’s time for some CCR

Creedence Clearwater Revival? Hell no. Cold Client Reactivation!

We’ve all got this experience in spades. I’m talking about the customers who ghosted us, left us, moved on, or walked away. Yeah, in the rural parts of the country, we often refer to these as the ones who flew the coop. We all have them (correction: we had and then lost them). The thing is, what most of us (from gigantic, massive companies to solo entrepreneurs) don’t have is a tracking and reviving process.

And here comes the big reveal. Unless tragedy befell those customers, there ARE ways of reactivating some of them. Here is a three-part process for you to experiment with.

Analyze who and what you lost

Spreadsheets are your friend. Pull down all your client data from the last 24 months and sort by revenue to identify the dormant accounts. If you are feeling frisky, you can also identify those accounts whose revenues ‘should’ be at a higher level. In other words, why aren’t they buying a certain level from you? Put that list aside; we’ll get to it in the second part.

Working with the dormant accounts, you will need three columns: Revenue, the Reason for Departure, and their current Market Potential. You very likely have the revenue numbers. The reasons will require some digging, honesty and frankly, parking of ego. The current market potential is what you think you can salvage in revenue if everything goes perfectly. Sort the data by current market potential, from highest to lowest. Now you have a place to start, and the first one on the list is what you think is your biggest potential.

Before you begin, however, be very, very honest with yourself. If you have any ill feelings about reconnecting, do one of two things — find the easiest way to do it or DON’T do it all. If you feel queasy ‘just because it’s not you’ to reach out to someone you haven’t spoken to in a few years, then have someone reach out for you, OR send off a nondescript bland email to restart the relationship. If there was bad blood somewhere, DON’T.

Create your outreach efforts

There is absolutely nothing written in stone for how to navigate this part. It is driven 100% by your intuition, will, and desire to re-connect. The whole point of ‘creating your outreach efforts’ is developing a process that fits your personality and culture. It is NOT about dragging you through the depths of hell to score another few pesos.

Treat every old customer you wish to connect with as a base case. Make some initial notes. Will you give them a phone call or email? How will you frame that initial conversation? What will you say or do? What is the one thing you want out of that convo?

From your notes, create a set of personalized outreach templates based on those reasons for departure. Then, build a three-touch reactivation campaign with escalating value propositions. For example,

-Find an excuse to send a cheerful reconnection email or leave a voice mail. (Birthdays, anniversaries, Happy New Year, et al.) are terrific ways to begin the process of reigniting relationships. Keep it light and friendly. When they respond, suggest a phone call to catch up.

During that phone call, listen carefully to determine if there are areas in which you can offer assistance. This is still not about selling. It’s about offering support. Do not sign off from that phone call without getting a follow-up date for more action. (It could be to keep in touch, let me tell you what I am doing, or send something over that will help, and we should talk about it after you have had time to digest it.)

-Then, and only then, on the third call, should you begin the process of bringing them back into the fold. I know it goes without saying, but please remember this is a human being, not a sales invoice and definitely not a bag of money with your name on it with whom you are conversing.

Track metrics

Look, none of this is written in stone. You are forging new ground with every reason for their departure. So keep track of your efforts. Even if it seems futile, keep track of the response rate, the reactivation rate, and the new revenue generated. Not only does this show you your efforts are working, but it also shows you to what extent and for how much energy. This is often a game of inches, so treat it like a game. It makes the process feel so much lighter.

Finally, after you have worked through the entire pre-determined scope of departees, develop a list, framework or action plan for replicating with every future departed customer. Train your people on how to do this and inculcate it into their way of thinking and doing.

Final thoughts

Pull out that other list—the one you think has great potential to sell more to your existing customers. Reread the outreach section again, and plan how you might serve and entice those customers. Keep track of your metrics.

Again, I have zero idea how many old customers you can recapture or how many existing customers you can help more. I do know all humans love to be listened to. I also know humans have no patience for anything that remotely sounds salesy. However, all humans respond to empathy, compassion and good advice. Some call that bit building trust. Once that trust is in place, they are more receptive to offers.

Next week, we’ll cover a real favourite. Meetings.