What’s your followup?

What is your procedure when you get a lead? When you get a customer? To retain a customer? Any other time?

Look, followup is the most important thing that you can do.

First of all, for leads, only about 2% of people buy on the first contact with a vendor. And over 80% don’t buy until they have been touched 5 or more times (sometimes much more!). You need to establish a relationship with them, make them know, like, and trust you.

Building a relationship is NOT a daily nagging that says BUY MY STUFF! BUY MY STUFF! BUY MY STUFF! Doing that 5 times does not count as 5 touches, it counts as a likely lost sale. That is not building a relationship, that is just being a PITA. Educate them, tell them things that will help them in their business or life, whether it is related to your product or not.

Use as many different media as possible. Have you thought about sending them a Thank You greeting card in the mail? You need to nurture them. There are likely other choices that they can make to get the product or service you offer. You need to make them understand that you are the best choice for them. Notice I said “for them.” This is not about how may clients you have, or how big your facility is, or how long you have been in business, etc. It is about how are you best suited to solve their problem? How are you going to eliminate their pain? You need to understand their problem and show them that you understand their problem and that you know how to make the problem go away. It is about them, not about you!

Same goes for your customers

Wow. Them.

The same followup and relationship building continues once they become a customer. Treat them better than you expect to be treated. For example, when someone buys our JoomFuse product (our integration between Joomla-based websites and Infusionsoft) we send them either a Starbucks card or a box of brownies. Why? Just because. They trusted us to solve their problem and we want to thank them for that trust.

Then we have our Insights bi-weekly newsletter (what you are reading now) that talks about business, balance and wealth. You see, growing your business is all about continuous followup and continuous information and continuous relationship-building.

Ok, so now that I have shown you some examples of why followup is important, how do you implement it? There are dozens of systems from 3x5 cards in a file box, to a spreadsheet, to an autoresponder like Constant Contact or Mail Chimp, to a full-blown marketing automation system like Infusionsoft, Hubspot, or Active Campaign.

I recommend that you go with a marketing automation platform if at all possible. It takes a little more to set up, but then it becomes a ‘set it and forget it’ system. Let’s go back to my example about a purchase of JoomFuse. The new client fills out an Order Form which triggers an Infusionsoft campaign that send them an email which thanks them for their purchase and gives them their login to the JoomFuse membership site to get the software and the tutorials. Then they are automatically sent the greeting card with the Starbucks inside (or brownies). A few days later, they are asked if their installation is going OK or if they need some help. I don’t have to remember to do it….Oh and I am informed of the sale so that I can do any additional manual steps I might feel are necessary.

We use Infusionsoft and love the flexibility and intelligence behind it. But the others are good as well. If you are interested in learning more about Infusionsoft or want to find out more about our marketing coaching programs, drop me an email.

And remember to ALWAYS followup.