Your customer pipeline - why it matters!

Do you have a customer pipeline? Does having a customer pipeline help you to attract more employer business?

These are all good questions, and they’re exactly the sort of questions that providers are asking, especially since most people in FE know they need to bring in more revenue from employers.

Your customer pipeline matters

First of all, your customer pipeline really matters because it’s a mechanism you can use to help you to be clear bout how likely employers are to do business with you in the near future.

Employers at the mouth of your pipeline are least likely to make a purchase now. That’s because they are just contemplating beginning a relationship with you. Maybe they’ve agreed to attend an event. Maybe they’ve signed up for your newsletter. They have some interest in you and what you do, but the relationship is just beginning.

When you’ve begun building that relationship and employers know you better they’ll be more likely to buy. That is as they travel down your customer pipeline they’ll be moving closer to that first purchase.

Customer relationships also matter

People buy from people.

People also buy from those they know, like and trust.

Helping employers to move along the know-like-trust continuum is the same as moving people down your customer pipeline.

The concept of the customer pipeline helps you to build this relationship at the right pace. It also helps you to avoid the wrong sort of selling.

You want all your employers to move a step further along your customer pipeline every few weeks. You don’t necessarily expect them to buy from you immediately.

Thus, once they’ve signed up for your newsletter, you want them to read it and to start clicking links in the publication. When they know a bit more about you, you want them to get in touch with you and possibly get some information sent to them. A little bit later you want to visit them or establish personal contact with them . . . and so on.

With each activity the employer is moving further down the customer pipeline and further along the know-like-trust continuum. It’s a slow, but often very rewarding, business.

Bombarding someone with “Buy now!” messages will send them out of your pipeline quickly. Helping employers to come to know you better and to like what they know about you will help all aspects of the relationship building process.

Monitoring your customer pipeline

Probably the best customer relationship management task you can undertake in the near future is to work out where employers are in your customer pipeline. That way you will know what sort of contact they are likely to value, and what will drive them away.

Monitoring your customer pipeline will help you to differentiate your approach to marketing and to developing and managing your relationship with individual employers.

Doing this well will be repaid with more business. That’s why the customer pipeline really matters.

See also: Have you created your customer pipeline?