Follow-Up
Marketing: How to Win More Sales with Less
Effort
By: David Frey
Copyright 2005 David Frey
A study done by the Association of Sales
Executives revealed that 81% of all sales
happens on or after the fifth contact. If
you’re a small business owner and you’re
only doing one or two follow-ups imagine all
the business you’re losing.
Not following up with your prospects and
customers is the same as filling up your
bathtub without first putting the stopper in
the drain!
But don’t be disheartened if you’re among
the 90% of business owners I talk to that
don’t do any follow up. The good news is you
have ample room for profitable improvement.
Consistent follow-up creates a predictable
and profitable stream of prospects and
customers that buy. Small businesses that
capture leads and follow-up with them enjoy
higher conversion rates and a higher
percentage of referrals than those that
don’t.
After asking many small business owners the
reason they don’t follow up I often hear
responses such as, "I don’t have the sales
staff to chase down all our leads", or
"We’re usually too busy to do a lot of
follow up." These responses automatically
set off red flags that tell me that they
lack a systematic process for following up.
The problem is not that they don’t have the
capacity to follow up with prospects, it’s
that they don’t have the systems in place to
do it.
______________________________________________
What Does a Good Follow Up System Look Like?
______________________________________________
A good follow up marketing system should
have three attributes.
It should be systematic, meaning that the
follow up process is done the same way every
time.
It should generate consistent, predictable
results.
It should require minimal physical
interaction to make it run, meaning it
should be able to run on autopilot.
Sounds like a dream come true for most small
business owners doesn’t it? Not only can it
be done, it’s being done every day. The
secret to "follow-up marketing" is to make
it automatic so that you don’t have to lift
a finger but the job still gets done.
With today’s technology it’s simpler than
ever. Automating your follow-up processes
gives you more time to work "on" your
business rather than "in" your business.
__________________________
Three Types of Follow Ups
__________________________
There are three types of people you should
be following up with, suspects (people in
your target marketplace), prospects (people
who have responded to your marketing but
have not purchased, and customers (people
who have purchased something from you.)
Each follow up message and offer will be
different for each type of person. With
suspects, you’ll want to entice them to call
you or visit your store / office.
With prospects, you need to persuade them to
make their first purchase. And with
customers, you want to convince them to come
back and do more business with you and give
your referrals.
Obviously the hardest type of person to
follow up with is a suspect because they
haven’t shown any interest yet in a pool or
hot tub and you usually don’t have their
contact information.
But that’s not true with prospects and
customers. You not only know who they are,
but you should already have their contact
information.
And if you follow up with your customers
with consistency you’ll find that they will
help you turn your suspects into prospects
and prospects into customers for you through
referrals.
__________________________________
Your Follow Up Marketing Tools
__________________________________
Your principal follow up marketing tools are
the telephone, direct mail, and email. Many
pool and hot tub business owners make the
mistake of jumping right on the telephone to
follow up; however, most prospects don’t
want a pushy sales message right away and
most prospects have been trained to consider
anyone who calls up to be a pushy
salesperson.
Instead, you should try to develop a
relationship of trust with your prospect by
quickly sending informational items such as
special reports, audio CDs, or videos before
you make a phone call.
Remember to always include a
"next-step-offer" to accompany your
educational materials. If the next step is
to visit the store, then entice them with an
appropriate offer or if the next step is to
call you, entice your prospect to call you
immediately.
People move through the buying process in
baby steps, especially when considering
buying high-ticket items such as hot tubs or
pools. Your offer should always help them
take the next step.
____________________________
Your Follow Up Sequence
____________________________
The power of your follow up will lie in your
follow up sequence. Your follow up sequence
is a series of communications with your
prospect that are "linked" together, with
each communication building on the previous
message.
For instance, you might start your second
letter by saying, "10 days ago I sent you a
letter..." You might also consider stamping
the message, "2nd Notice" on the envelope to
let people know this is the second time
you’ve contacted them.
Referencing the previous communication links
what you’re saying with what you’ve already
said and reminds your prospect that you care
enough to continue the conversation.
Usually, when doing direct mail you should
include three to five mailings spaced out
about seven days apart. When using a
sequential autoresponder you can have as
many follow ups as you want because using
email is basically free (that’s why you
always want to get a prospects email
address).
One of my clients has over 20 follow-ups in
his autoresponder sequence that go out over
a six month period.
Each sequence should follow a logical
argument and you might consider bolstering
the offer with each communication using a
deadline as a motivator to act now.
As an example, in the third communication
you could say, "I’m surprised you haven’t
taken me up on my generous offer. What’s
holding you back?" Or consider saying, "I’ve
written you three times and you still
haven’t taken me up on my offer so I’m going
to pull out all the stops and make you an
offer you simply can’t refuse."
Notice how the language always links the
previous communication and increases the
boldness of the offer. It’s the same type of
conversation you might have in a regular
sales conversation.
_______________________________________________________
How to Put Your Follow Up Marketing System
on Autopilot
_______________________________________________________
What I’m about to reveal to you is the key
to developing a powerful follow up marketing
system because it overcomes the number one
reason most businesses don’t follow up.
You must automate your follow up system as
much as possible so that there are few, if
any, physical interactions from your
employees with the system. It’s the required
physical interactions (i.e. printing
letters, sending emails, inputting leads
etc.) where 99% of all the breakdowns happen
in well-intentioned follow up marketing
systems.
To automate your follow-ups you should
consider using robotic marketing systems and
outsourcing any manual interactions to a
dedicated service.
For instance, to capture your leads you
should consider using a toll-free automated
recorded message system that captures your
prospects contact information and
automatically transcribes it and sends your
leads to you in a spreadsheet every morning
via email.
If you’re using a direct mail follow up
system (and you should be), find a
fulfillment house to do the mailings for
you. To find a fulfillment house, simply go
to your local printer and ask them to refer
you to a fulfillment house in the area.
Now step back for a moment and see the power
of what I’ve just revealed to you. Imagine
running an ad, having your prospect call up
and give their contact information via your
recorded message system.
Then having your leads automatically sent to
your fulfillment house via email, after
which your prospect receives a five-sequence
direct mail package containing your most
persuasive marketing message -- without you
lifting one finger!
You can set up the exact same type of
"hands-free" follow up marketing system
using an email autoresponder system. Your
prospect will not only be receiving your
direct mail messages, but you can insert
your email messages in between your
mailings.
____________________________________
What About Calling to Follow Up?
____________________________________
You’ll notice that I didn’t say anything
about calling your prospect. That’s because
you want your prospect to have already
received your educational marketing messages
and have most of their questions answered
before they call you. An educated prospect
is your best prospect.
They already know why you’re different, what
your value proposition is, and how you’re
uniquely qualified to meet their needs. In
essence, they’ve pre-qualified themselves
before you ever have to spend time
physically speaking to them.
This drastically reduces the sales cycle and
increases your conversion rate because you
have positioned your small business to be
their only logical choice.
_____________
Conclusion
_____________
Follow-up marketing will boost your closing
rate and dramatically increase your customer
satisfaction. Following up with systematic
processes allows you to leverage your
salespeople’s time and enhance their
productivity, which will result in more
sales with less effort and isn’t that what
you want? Start winning more sales today by
implementing your own follow-up marketing
system.
About the Author
David Frey is the author of the
best-selling manual, "The Small Business
Marketing Bible" and the Senior Editor of
the "Small Business Marketing Best Practices
Newsletter." To get your free lifetime
subscription visit http://www.MarketingBestPractices.com
