I have 2 landlines at home. One for home use, the other for business calls. I use different providers - not by design but just kind of by default.

The personal line is with BT, the other is with Talk Talk. Both are 'OK' but I wouldn't go out of my way to recommend either to friends or acquaintances.

I picked up the mail today to find a letter from Talk Take addressed to:

A Ward-Winning
24 Meg Wireless
Phone-and-Broadband
Greater Savings
4U 2DAY

That grabbed my attention as a) it isn't my name or address and b) I'm already a Talk Talk customer.

"Ah...." I thought, "maybe it is a generic marketing mailer trying to tempt me away from BT".

I opened it and it was. It was even offering me a killer broadband and phone package at half the price of my existing Talk Talk package.

"How strange, I've been a customer for 3 years and they've never called me to ask if I want to upgrade my package to this cheaper, better service - I'd better call them and find out why...."

To cut a short story even shorter, after a 10 minute conversation, I'd knocked 35% off my broadband package, got free calls to 0845 and 0870 numbers and a brand new wireless router. OK, I had to sign up for an 18 month contract - which I'd have done anyway by default if they hadn't mailed me - but all in all a good deal.

What excellent service!

Or is it?

As a long standing customer, why wasn't I offered this package anyway, before anybody else? Surely it makes more sense to lock in existing customers before you try and attract new ones?

There is some overstated and probably erroneously mis-quoted statistic about the the cost of acquiring new customers vs. retaining existing ones (interestingly, if you google "new customers vs existing cost" most of the top hits are links to web pages of telecoms and media companies). Lets say for arguments sake that it costs 10 times more to win a new customer than keep an old one. That is 10% the effort to sell to somebody who you know than somebody you don't know.

If you were a lazy sales person, you could work 10% of the time and still sell the same. Or, you could do both!

If you're familiar with the fable of Aesop's dog, you'll remember that the greedy dog saw his own reflection in the stream and noticed that it had a juicy bone.

So he snapped at it to try and grab the tasty new bone, only for his own bone to tumble into the stream and float away. The moral - if you want to have more, focus on what you already have captive before looking elsewhere.

Once you have tended to your farm, then you can go out hunting.