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The sales process · After the order

The customers who stopped buying are still in your books, and nobody has rung them.

Winning back dormant customers starts with a list of everybody who bought from you and then stopped. The work is sorting that list into the accounts worth a call, asking them honestly why they went, and leaving the rest alone. GullySales runs the reactivation once the list is out of your books.

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Scope, fee, reporting and term are agreed in writing after we have read your brief and spoken to you.

A customer adviser and business owner review a product guide together

In one paragraph

Winning back dormant customers starts with a list of everybody who bought from you and then stopped. The work is sorting that list into the accounts worth a call, asking them honestly why they went, and leaving the rest alone. GullySales runs the reactivation once the list is out of your books.

Your accounting package already holds the list. Ask it for every customer with a sale in the year before last and nothing since, then export that to a spreadsheet. In Tally, Busy or Zoho Books it is a ledger report and half a morning of somebody's time. It comes back longer than the owner guessed, every time.

Two things stop it happening. It is nobody's job, and reading the list feels like an admission. Forty names on a page, each one a customer you had and lost without noticing, makes for an uncomfortable morning.

Then comes the part everybody avoids. You have to ring and ask why they stopped, and let the answer be whatever it is. Some of it will be dull: the buyer moved, the project finished, the unit shifted to Hosur. The rest is about you, and whoever caused it should not make the call.

The step before this asks your pleased customers for an introduction. This is the opposite conversation, with people who never complained and simply left. What comes back belongs in the sales review that follows this stage, because the same three reasons keep turning up.

Where this sits

Stage 9 of 10, after the order. Handing the customer to whoever delivers, then earning the second order and the referral.

The stage before
Sales closure
The stage after
Running the process

If you want this done for you

Win back the customers who stopped ordering and were never asked why.

Read the customer reactivation page

The work

What this step is actually like.

  • “What dormant means in your trade”

    There is no standard gap, so set one and write it down. A tyre dealer whose customers come twice a year treats six months of silence as dormant. An architect whose clients build once in a decade cannot use the word at all. Pick the silence that would worry you, then agree it with whoever knows the customers, who is rarely the person keeping the ledger.

  • “The question, and then the silence”

    This is not a we miss you message sent to a list. It is the owner ringing: I see you have not ordered since the batch before Diwali last year, and I wanted to know what happened. Then stop talking and let it be awkward for a moment. The first answer is polite. The second one is true.

  • “The ones to leave alone”

    Not every dormant customer is worth a call. The account that needed three reminders for every payment was expensive, not lost. A customer whose plant has closed is a fact rather than an opportunity. The buyer who moved to a cheaper grade and is content with it will cost you a price cut and nothing else.

  • “The offer that insults the customers who stayed”

    A discount for the ones who left is a lesson for the ones who stayed. In a trade where buyers know each other, it reaches them inside a week. If you must give something, give what is not price: first refusal on the new batch, a visit from the engineer, a trial of the new grade.

What we do

What you end up with.

The artefacts this step produces, what each one is for, and how you know it is finished.

  1. The dormant list

    Columns: the customer, the last order date, the gap in months, what they used to buy. Then the total they were billed, who dealt with them, and a status column you fill as you call. Sort it by what they were worth, not by how well you remember them.

    Result: The account worth most is called first, and none of them is called twice.

  2. The reason column, in their words

    One line per call, written the way the customer said it. Price went up in April. Your man stopped coming. We asked for a quotation twice and heard nothing. Do not turn it into a category.

    Result: You find out what is losing customers while it is still happening.

  3. The terms, decided before you dial

    What you will and will not concede, agreed between the owner and whoever prices the work. Put it in one line at the top of the sheet. Anything beyond it goes back to the owner.

    Result: Nobody buys a customer back at a price you would not repeat.

  4. The note to the sales review

    The reasons that came up more than once in the first twenty calls, written up with the dates and the names beside them. It is a page, and it goes to the monthly review.

    Result: The reasons customers left reach the people who can change them.

Where this fits

Three pieces of sales work, in this order.

This work sits inside sales process design, at stage 7, after the sale. The audit comes before it, and sales management keeps it running.

  1. Step 1

    Sales audit

    Find where deals are being lost and what to fix first.

    Start here if you cannot say where orders are lost.

  2. Step 2 · you are here

    Sales process design

    One written way to sell, from first enquiry to repeat order.

    Start here if every salesperson sells differently.

  3. Step 3

    Sales management

    A target, a review routine and someone who owns the number.

    Start here if the team has targets and no routine.

Tell us what you need Your brief is read before we call. Scope, fee and term in writing.

FAQ

Questions owners ask before they call.

Not here? More answers, or ask on WhatsApp.

Tell us what you need
How far back should we go?
Two buying cycles, whatever that means in your trade. For a monthly consumable it is a short list reaching back a year. For machinery it might be five. Past that the phone numbers are wrong and the buyer has moved on.
Who should make these calls?
The owner takes the largest accounts, because a customer who left will say things to an owner that he will not say to a salesperson. Hand the rest to whoever stays calm on the phone. Do not hand any of them to the person the customer fell out with.
What if they stopped because of something we did?
Say it back to them plainly and say what has changed since. No defending, and no explaining what that month was like at your end. Then ask for one small order rather than the old volume, because that is a decision they can make without trusting you completely again.
How do we know it is worth doing at all?
Pull the list this week and count the rows. Ask whether your CRM can be trusted, and a dormant list is the quickest test of that: software that cannot produce one is software nobody is using. Ten calls will tell you whether the rest deserve the time.
How much does it cost?
There is no price list, because the work differs by business. The fee is scoped after we have read your brief and spoken to you, and put in writing before anything starts. For sales work it is mostly our time, with production only where scripts, decks or CRM setup need it.
How long is the contract?
The term is agreed in writing after we have spoken, along with the fee and the reporting. It is never a default twelve months, and renewal is decided on the numbers against the baseline recorded at the start.
How soon will we see results?
Fixes to reply time and follow-up are the quickest to show, because the enquiries already exist. Process, CRM and training changes show as the team uses them. Each one is tracked against the baseline.
Who will actually do the work?
The person you speak to before anything starts. We work from one office in Nagarbhavi, Bengaluru, with no account managers in between.
What do you need from us?
To start, last month's enquiries in any format and time with whoever handles them. After that, access to the accounts the work touches, such as the website, Google Business Profile or CRM.

Where to go next

The work that carries this step further.

Services

The rest of after the order

Or read the whole sales process in order.

Your next practical step

Tell us what you are trying to grow, and we will read it before we call.

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