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124 • The 100 Greatest Ideas for Building the Business of Your Dreams

Idea 79 - Sell to your existing customers

There are those in the know who say that it costs seven times as much to sell prod-
ucts or services to a new prospect as it does to sell the same products and services to
an existing customer. This is particularly true of those customers who are big, say
international, businesses. Work the corridors. Ask your current clients for the names
of other people in the organisation who could also benefit from your services. This is
worth an awful lot:

• You may be the first in to speak to someone about a new opportunity.
• A recommendation from someone the new prospect respects is worth itsweight

in gold.
• Your product or service will probably require little alteration to meet the new

need. This gives you a good gross margin.
• You are moving towards becoming the company standard that makes selling

even easier.
• Your top management contacts give you good leverage, see Idea 49.

If the customer is an American company and you can get exposure and orders in the
USA, you have just opened up a market the size of which you hitherto only dreamed
about.

Idea 80 - Don't buy a mobile phone

This is a tricky one. Most people running a business have a mobile phone to 'keep in
touch'. But don't forget two things. First of all people built the business of their
dreams fifteen years ago without the aid of mobile phones. The thing you will have
least of is thinking time, and mobile phones spell the end to that. Two hours on a
train thinking about how you are doing and where you are going will in many cases