There are several times in your sales process when customer follow-up is critical.
1. When your customer is in the decision stage of the buying process.
Perhaps your customer did not buy at the time you showed them your product. This could be for many reasons – maybe they needed to talk it over with a spouse, or maybe they needed to save up some money. Maybe they went on vacation and forgot about you. There are many reasons why your customer may not buy from you the first time you show them your product. You owe it to that customer to remind them that you are still there ready to help them.
2. After your customer has purchased a product from you, it is imperative that you follow-up with that customer to see how the product is working out for them.
Perhaps you would eventually want to show them some additional features that they may have overlooked or forgotten about. You need to assess their satisfaction with your product for two reasons. If they are unhappy with the product, you want to make sure you find a way to make it right. Either they should receive a full refund, or another product, or something so that the last experience the customer has with you is a positive one.
If the customer is happy with your product, you need to ask for a referral to other people they know who might like your product. You also want to ask for a testimonial from your happy customers. Testimonials are valuable to add to your marketing materials.
3. Finally, if a customer has purchased from you before, and they were happy with the experience, they are likely to purchase from you again if you have additional products or services that match their needs.
It is up to you to continue to follow-up with information and relevant suggestions for products that will help your customer.
You Need a Customer Follow Up System
Have you developed a plan for customer follow-up yet? If not, this section will help you get organized. Is the desk in your small business office overrun with business cards to search through every time you need a phone number? Perhaps you are using a day timer or on-line calendar. Perhaps you are using a contact manager. These are good tools but you need a better follow-up strategy.
If your customer follow-up system consists of boxes of business cards or names scribbled on writing pads I have a plan for you.
How to create your customer follow up system
You will want to select several tools to reach out and touch your customers periodically. You will need to balance the timing of your follow-up and maintain professionalism. You do not want your prospect to be turned off or irritated because you contact them too often. You do not want to appear desperate to sell something else. You also do not want to leave your customer’s remembering you up to chance.
Remember, the purpose of your customer follow-up is to help your customer solve a problem. If you don’t follow up periodically, your customer will forget you and move onto your competitor the next time they need a product or service like yours.
Several tools you must have in your customer follow-up system
- The telephone
In today’s online and high-tech world, people forget about the phone. This is still a great way to reach out and touch your customers. It is especially effective after the sale to ask how it is going and to see if they are happy with your product. The phone is a very personal way to interact with your customers.
- Email with auto responder
An email drip system with an auto responder will let you automate email contact with your customer to continue to feed them information and to keep your name in front of them. This is a low cost way to keep in touch with your list of contacts. With an email drip system, you set up your series of messages and then forget about them.
- Newsletter
A newsletter is a value-added way to provide information to your customer. Your customer can subscribe to the newsletter giving you permission to continue to contact them with relevant valuable information.
- Post Card or letter
Guess what? These days, people still love to get something in the mail with their name on it. They especially like to get a personal card or letter. Do you remember the last time you received an unexpected personal card or letter in the mail from someone you know? It really is exciting to tear open the envelope to see what is inside. You can really set yourself apart in the online world by sending a personal greeting card or letter.
Believe me, your competitors are not doing this. This is an excellent way to differentiate your business from the thousands of others out there. Sending a personal card or letter is a very effective way to do customer follow-up, but it can be time consuming.
What are the chances that you will really go to the store, buy the cards, write them out, address them, stamp them, and drop them in the mail? Not likely, right? I mean after all, we are all busy with our families and our business. Sending a card can be used for thank-you, to follow-up with contacts, or just to wish your customer a happy birthday.
Joe Girard, who is listed in the Guiness Book of World Records as the World’s Greatest Car Sales Person used greeting cards to stay in contact with his customers. His customers got a greeting card every month. This helped foster repeat business for him. When they were ready to buy another car, they always remembered Joe.
Another successful salesperson whose secret was greeting cards, was Tom Hopkins. Tom was the World’s Greatest Real Estate Sales Person. At the time he retired from real estate sales, he had sold a house everyday for 365 days. You can see from these two examples how powerful the personal touch of a greeting card can be.
These two successful gentlemen both attribute their success to the power of a greeting card and the effectiveness of a consistent customer follow-up system. But, in their day, they sent hand-written cards that they hand wrote, addressed and stamped to send. They dropped stacks of cards in the mail every day. Lucky for you, today this process can be automated.
- Setting up a tickler file
In order to follow-up with your prospective customers, you need a system that organizes them in a way so that you will know what method and message of follow-up they need. You should set up a hanging file system that is divided into sections for prospects, consultations, and customer. Organize your system so that it mirrors where you are in the sales funnel.
Prospects
* Phone Call
* Email
* Newsletter
* Card/Letter
Consultation
* Product walk through
* Follow up call
* Thank you card
* Newsletter
* Phone Call
Customers
* Thank you card
* Phone Call
* Consultation
* Referral
* Email List
* Newsletter
Adding your contacts to the system
In addition to adding your contacts to your contact manager, you will also want to do the following to work them through your system. Take a normal file folder, and staple your prospective customer’s business card to it. If you don’t have a card, just create a label. You can use the folder to write notes, or to store other paperwork from the contact like sales receipts, records, or anything else related to that customer.
The contact’s folder gets moved through the filing system in the same order as the sales funnel. If you have already completed a product walk through, you would move them into the follow-up section. They remain in that section, until you actually follow-up.
Once they complete one event, you move them to the next event. When they become a customer, they go straight into the thank you card file. Keep this filing system in your office and make sure you have time scheduled each day to go through it. This will help keep you focused on what needs to be done for each customer each day.
This is an excellent organized way of improving your customer follow-up. Your sales success will improve significantly with implementation of these few tips.
Becky Lynn Smith is passionate about internet marketing and her goal is to help you leverage the power of the internet to help your small business. Becky obtained her BBA in Management Information Systems at Texas Tech University. She took a job after college in the IT department at a major oil company in Houston, TX. After 8 years, she went back to school and obtained her MBA at the University of Houston. Becky obtained her Project Management Professional (PMP) designation from the Project Management Institute in 1999.
After leaving big oil, she took a job as the eTechnology Manager for a major mutual fund investment company. Becky’s team had responsibility for over 40 different websites. She learned a lot about developing websites, developing and managing content, and optimizing for search engines. Becky is a lifetime learner and is a voracious reader of anything she can find about Sales and Marketing. She has successfully managed many large IT and web development projects to completion.
Becky’s secret weapon for automating your customer follow-up system can be found at http://www.mysupersecretweapon.com
Her website, located at http://www.revolutionary-internet-marketing-strategies.com specializes in helping small business professionals and home businesses with strategies for marketing on the Internet.
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