Closely monitor lack of customer activity, not just activity, to drive future sales revenue. Why? Renewal dollars often represent 70% to 80% of sales budgets and quota achievement. Saving “at risk” customers before they leave, allows you to protect this revenue.

Lack of activity could demonstrate that your customer is unhappy with your product, not aware of all the product features/options and/or is testing out one of your competitor’s products.

“At risk” customer inactivity will vary by industry, product and service, but here are some examples that may apply to your business:

• Decreasing Product Usage:

If you sell SAS and/or a product with a secure login, identify customers who used to log in on a regular basis, and are now logging in significantly less or not at all.

Ernst and Young gave an excellent example of decreasing usage in their white paper “Customer attrition: Improve the efficiency of your customer retention management”.

“Think of a bank customer. Perhaps the customer does not take the time to cancel a current account, but simply leaves the account open with the minimum amount required, and instead uses a different bank for daily transactions and savings. He or she then cancels a debit card and opens a term deposit at a different bank that offers better conditions. Little by little, the customer reduces the relationship with the first bank. This bank may not identify the problem since this customer did not deliberately express the determination to switch banks. “

• Leftover Licenses: If you sell your customers multiple licenses for a product, identify customers who have a number of licenses that show no usage.

• Unsubscribe Requests: Watch for customers who unsubscribe to your email, direct mail or catalogs, after being “on the list” for a good period of time.

• Dropping Order Quantity & Dollars: For consumable products, recognize customers who begin ordering much lower quantities or fewer dollars than their previous order history.

Once you have collected the customer inactivity data there are two approaches to using it: short term to save existing customers and mid/long term to predict future at risk customers.

From a short term perspective, develop internal processes and exception reports to identify at risk customers, and then take action to save them. Set up special calling or visiting schedules. Identify the causes of inactivity and then implement solutions such as customer education & training, special offers etc.

Longer term, leverage your inactivity data to identify trends and then (partner with an uber talented marketing analytics guru to) build a model that can predict customers who may be “at risk” in the future.  This allows you to be proactive, not reactive, in how you work with these customers and change your sales and service approach.

How have you monitored inactivity in your organization to protect future sales? Please add your comments.