How often do you contact your new leads? It’s a very important aspect of the marketing process. Remember that we teach a process that has four main steps, the four modern P’s of marketing.
First of all, we only talk to Possible customers. We need to decide who’s a possible customer. Then we want to use lead generation to find out who from the possibles can become a Probable customer.
Then, from that we need to lead convert into a Purchaser, where they buy a product.
And then the most important part, we need to work on those customers to convince them to become a Preacher for your business, your products, or your service.
But the area I see a lot of people missing out on is the step after the lead generation. So, whether you go to a trade show, whether you’re advertising whether it’s a lead magnet online, doesn’t matter what it is.
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You go to all that effort to get a lead, but how often do you follow-up? How often do you then contact them?
Many, many studies have been made, where researchers made contact to a couple hundred companies and they’ll find that from those, something like fifteen percent will never, ever, ever reply.
Another percentage will reply once but that may take a week, a couple of weeks, ten days. That’s too late and they never follow up beyond “Thanks for the inquiry”.
Others may contact a couple of times or three times but it’s not enough. Further research shows that, to gain the trust and have someone in a position ready to buy needs a lot of touch points between the business and the customer or potential customer.
Quite often it’s seven, eight, nine or ten.
Most sales people (here’s a shocker!) are lazy. And yes, I was a salesperson as well, and yes, I was as lazy as the next guy.
If something I was trying were not working out, would I keep going? No, I’d move on and I’d think there’s going to be an easier one coming up. So I’d move on, I’d give up with that, I’d move on.
But, the thorough sales people keep going, they know if it’s a good lead, if it’s a good prospect, those people have come, have said, “Yes, I want your information, because yes, I’m interested in your services and the market you are in”.
They just need more time to give their trust and become a customer.
Weekend Challenge
So, this Weekend Challenge, this one requires a pen and a pad or piece of paper. Oh, sorry they all do.
I’d like you to think of how often you are contacting your customers. So, on that pad draw out three columns. In the left you can write one to ten.
In the next column, you’re going to write the method of contact. Now, for some, it may be just email but others, if you’re in a lead generation where you may catch a phone number or an address, (I don’t recommend that in most online cases because, the more complicated to form, if it’s not needed then the less likely to get lead), but in some very expensive purchases, it’s essential.
So you can contact them by phone, by post, by email or by a visit.
And, now, I want to, in the third column, to start working on how to contact them ten times. For example, the first contact by email, “thank you for contacting us, we’re very honored that you took the time and we’ll make it worth your while. Before we present you with the xyz why not go to our blog and look at our top five most popular blog posts because this is where most people wish to start and then I’ll talk to you tomorrow”, etc, etc.
Tomorrow comes along, so give them something, give them something worthwhile. “Here is a download for our best checklist, infographics, or something like that”.
Another time, how about, “have you liked us on Facebook? We’re very active on social media or Linked in, or Pinterest or Twitter, here’s our most popular post, here’s our most popular tweet. Please like us”.
Don’t forget to ask people, tell people what you want them to do, a call to action.
On another contact, if you’re contacting people via the post, you might grab a clipping out of a newspaper, or an article out of a magazine and pop a little Post-it note on it and say something like “I thought this might be of interest to you”. Pop that with your business card, in an envelope and hand-write the envelope, put a real stamp on it (gets you past that direct mail filters) and send it out to them.
If you have the phone number, phone them up, ask them, “thank you for getting in-touch. I’m just wondering, why did you sign up? What were you hoping that we could provide for you? We want to provide it. We’d just like to ask you what you’d like from us”.
That is a killer. They love this, thinking, “Wow, really?” You can send that via email.
How about sending them a short survey? “What are your top three requirements for the next three months?” Give them a multiple choice depending on what your things are.
There are many, many, many things. Write out ten.
That is your Weekend Challenge. If you come up with a great list, email it to me.
Visit our blog. There are many, many posts on that that may give you some inspiration and some ideas of how to contact and what to do.
Otherwise have yourself a great weekend and I’ll speak to you next week.
