Step 5 Time to Wow

This is the fifth step in our continuing series on Lifecycle Marketing. Previously we focused on ways you can convert lead into sales.

As anyone who’s been in business for any length of time knows, making a sale is only the first part of the equation. How you follow-up can go a long way in determining whether you’ve made a short-term sale or created a loyal customer that will stay with you for the long-haul. 

At a minimum, your product should meet their expectations and be delivered in a timely manner. A well planned follow up after the sale can help you go beyond those expectations and truly ‘wow’them. 

A follow-up doesn’t have to be just an email or a phone call. You can use all the channels at your disposal to reinforce all the points you’ve made during the build-up to the sale and continue to build trust.  

The first and most obvious way to follow up with your customers is a satisfaction survey. A well-built survey can give you a variety of critical information including how well your product or service met their needs, how easy it was to order from you and how quickly you were able to resolve any issues that arose. The feedback these surveys can provide is invaluable to helping you improve the quality of your offerings. It can even lead to new sales possibilities. For example, a small bookstore might start carrying puzzles and greeting cards based on their surveys showing a strong interest among their existing customers. 

Try to personalize your follow up as much as you can. It’s always a good idea to send a thank-you to a customer following a purchase, but if you can tailor that thank-you specifically for them, it becomes that much more powerful.  Infusionsoft simplifies this for you with a wealth of tools like merge fields and tags.

As with nurturing a sale, the possibilities for creative follow-ups are endless. You’re not just nurturing a sale now, you’re nurturing repeat business. 

One of the best ways to do that is to continue to offer them great content. You have an idea of their profile based on what they’ve previously purchased, so why not take advantage of it? If they’ve purchased a blender from you, offer free recipes so they can find new uses for it. If they’ve bought a bottle of wine from you, offer them tips on which foods to serve it with. 

Following up with your customers is a key part of building a long-term business. By following up with a customer, you’re increasing the value of the product they purchased, and in effect increasing your own value as the product’s provider.

In the next step of our series on Lifecycle Marketing, we’ll talk about how you can increase the value of your customers by upselling more of your products and services.