We had a conversation with a client about gathering new business and new sales. We were been asked how Sage can help get new business. I have to admit that Sage could not really help as it only manages customers that were set up in Sage and hence could not help with NEW business.

However, we then looked at his customer list. There were approx. 1500 customers but there was only a balance associated with 100 accounts. Not sure what happened the other 1,400 customers.

We then started drilling down a bit further and tried an old Sage trick of listing the last invoice associated with all customers and then sort this list.

We suddenly had a list of 800 past customers who had not used our client’s services in the last 18 months!!!

I would suggest that it is far easier to generate new/repeat business from these “distant” customers rather than “New” customers.

So, if you want to try this yourselves, Go to CUSTOMERS, and in the detail option you will see A/C, Name, Balance, etc. Move the mouse over one of these words, click on the right hand mouse button and select LAST INVOICE.

The date of the last invoice to all of your customers will be listed and you can click the LAST INVOICE heading to sort this column by date.

Hopefully, this list might prompt you to contact some old customers or question why some of your customers are not buying from you.

I hope you find this tip list helpful to generate new sales.