Any sales person, or sales training course, will tell you that the true key to success is staying in touch with past clients and potential clients. The chance of closing a sale increases dramatically with every point of contact. It is very common to only close a deal after 10 or more points of contact. It is also very common to lose business from existing clients simply because they do not know all of the different services that you offer.
As business people we need to remember that our customers lead various and busy lives, and for them to remember everything that we do as a business is too much to ask of them. So what can we do to maintain contact with our customers and gently remind them of different services we offer without being obnoxious or pushy?
To be perfectly honest I have not always been very good at this. My business has grown very successfully over the past five years without much follow-up, and because of that my follow-up has definitely been lacking. I’ve been striving to improve this in several different ways and I think that these might be useful for you as you consider trying to improve the relationship with your customers as well.
The first thing I would recommend thinking about is Social Media. Many people find that they do not have time for Social Media so they have companies (like us) help them out. But to be honest it can be very easy for you to put out Social Media content in your day-to-day business. It may not seem like much but little things can be done during the course of your average service call that people would be interested in seeing. For example if you are a plumbing company and you take a before and after picture while you’re at the job and post it when you replace somebody’s broken pipe, people like to see that kind of stuff, I know it seems strange. If you replace a clunky old furnace from the 1960s with a brand-new shiny furnace people also like to see that. If you wire in a fancy new electrical panel and your wiring is really neat and tidy people also like to see that. Almost every business has some piece of a service or product that they could quickly take a picture of and throw on Social Media in less than 60 seconds and it would get views and likes and shares.
In order to make that part of your day you may have to change your policies and procedures. My recommendation is to make it a part of the service call: a before and after picture which you then show the customer and then maintain for your records which protects you with evidence of how the job site was left and how the job site appeared to beforehand. So this is really a double benefit, you get extra exposure online and you cover yourself a little bit with proof of the job that you did. Of course you should definitely get your customer’s permission before using the photos on Social Media.
Another thing I would recommend trying is a newsletter. They are quick and easy to set up and you can use them to showcase different services that you offer. Just make sure to provide useful information and don’t make it all about sales. People can get easily turned off by sales but they may want to read something that is helpful to them. This helpful information can help to stick in their brain that you were the one that provided the information.
And an extra Super Tip of the Month would be how to quickly and easily write the content for these newsletters. Most smartphones now have a voice to text feature. You can simply create a new email to yourself on your phone and then click on the microphone icon and start talking and it will record your voice. You might need to clean up the punctuation and grammar etc. but at least you are not starting from zero with your keyboard staring at a blank screen.
And now for a Double Extra Bonus Tip you can then use this newsletter content and put it onto your blog on your website. Thanks for reading and of course if you have any questions feel free to reach out
