I hear this question in almost every leadership team. Sales wants more leads. The CEO wants growth. Someone says the best customers are the ones we already have. Everyone is right, and nothing gets decided.
Here is the simplest way I know to answer it.
Ask what is actually missing
There are only two reasons a company does not grow enough:
- The customers you have buy too little.
- You have too few of the right customers.
They feel the same in the monthly numbers. They need completely different work. So before you decide where to spend time and money, find out which one you have.
Look at three years of invoices
You don't need a consultant or a new system for this. Pull three years of sales per customer and look at three things:
- Are your existing customers growing? If most of them buy a bit more every year, you have room to grow with them. If they are flat or shrinking, more effort there will not change much.
- How much do they buy from you of what they could buy? A customer who buys one product from you and four similar things from others is an opportunity. A customer who already buys everything from you is not.
- How dependent are you on a few names? If five customers make up half the revenue, you need new ones, no matter how happy those five are.
Then the answer is usually obvious
Focus on existing customers when they are growing, they buy only part of what you offer, and you are not too dependent on a few of them. This is the faster and cheaper route. They already trust you. You are improving a relationship, not starting one.
Focus on new customers when your existing ones have stopped growing, they already buy most of what you have, or a few names carry too much of the business. This is slower and more expensive. It is also the only way out.
Most companies need both, but rarely in equal parts. The point is not to pick one forever. The point is to know which one deserves most of the effort this year, and to say it out loud so sales, marketing and management pull in the same direction.
The question behind the question
When a company cannot answer this, it is rarely because the data is missing. It is because nobody has decided who the right customers are. Without that, "new leads" just means more of everything, and "existing customers" just means the ones who shout loudest.
That decision is what I call step zero. Everything else gets easier after it.
If you want help reading your own numbers, write to me. An afternoon with your invoices is often enough to see the answer.