Before investing in a separate CRM solution, QuickBooks users should first make full use of the tools already at their fingertips. For instance, we can borrow a page from non-profit organizations to increase repeat business. In their never-ending pursuit of maximizing the economic value of donor relationships, non-profits have elevated to an art form how to get customers (“donors”) to buy (“donate”) more, and to buy more frequently. Many use sophisticated, specialized software to help them do this, but your QuickBooks file, too, can offer valuable insight.

Take for example the notion of LYBUNTs. This is non-profit-speak for donors who donated Last Year BUt Not This year. To identify your company’s LYBUNTs, pull this report in QuickBooks:

• REPORT CENTER / SALES / SALES BY CUSTOMER SUMMARY.
• Customize the date range to span 3-5 years
• Make COLUMNS = YEAR
• FONTS & NUMBERS / EXCEPT ZERO AMOUNTS (this makes the data patterns pop out, easier to see).

Which customer relationships have waned? Look for gaps. Who bought from you one year but hasn’t been heard from since? If these are your target customers and they’re no longer buying, call them. Send an e-mail. Your company does good work. You help people. You provide a valuable product or service. Let your customers know that. Let them know you still very much want their business.

This quick quantitative analysis speaks volumes about your customer relationships and like all QuickBooks reports, it can be tweaked to fit your needs. Try pulling, for example, a 2-year report and spreading columns by quarter. Or pull a 1-year report and spread columns by month – this shortens the time that you let customers drift away. These reports don’t tell the whole story, of course, but their dispassionate perspective can help us all better understand where we succeeded with customers, and we might do better to meet their needs.