Just like Goldilocks and Papa Bear’s porridge, you’ve probably been burned a few times when your follow-up approach was too frequent or pushy – “don’t call me, I’ll call you” (or some more polite version of the same).

And just like Goldilocks and Mama Bear’s porridge, you’ve probably encountered a chill when your follow-up was too slow or soft – “we already made our purchase, we’ll keep you in mind for next time.”

So how can you avoid these two extremes?  How can you follow up in a way that is just right?

I gave a presentation to a group of business owners last week and the topic of proper follow-up extended from that seminar into a private meeting this week with one of the attendees.  So I thought I would share how our discussion went and the “rules” that emerged. 

See below – please share your thoughts too!

1)      Follow up starts during the current conversation.  I have coached several clients through this.  If in the current conversation you commit to delivering a proposal or other document that will require their review, establish a meeting to discuss it and answer their questions right then and there.  Sample script:

“Great Jim.  So I’ll be putting a proposal together.  You’ll have that in your inbox by Tuesday.  I’d like to give you a day or so to review it, but I also want to make sure that I address any questions you may have.  What’s your calendar like on Wednesday or Thursday?  Let’s go ahead and schedule that next meeting.”

2)      Follow up on the heels of offering value.  This is where your web and social media efforts weave together with your follow up practices.  Especially for each blog post, email piece, or article that your company produces, identify people who would find the information helpful and send them a copy with an individualized email.  Now you’ve set the stage for a follow up call:

“I hope you’re doing well… I wanted to make sure you noticed the article I sent you.  When I saw it I thought of you…”

This approach assumes that there is no active opportunity, but you have an interest in nurturing the relationship.  One of these kinds of personalized messages per quarter is a good starting point for frequency.  Check out this post for further ideas Sales Venture Capital Style. 

3)      Sometimes it’s o.k. to just “check in.”  If you are concerned about being a nuisance, don’t worry as much about the frequency as the content of your messages or conversations.  If you always have a self-serving agenda – like you want to meet or get names of others you should call or find out where they are in their budgeting process – then your prospects will find you annoying and avoid your calls.  Whenever you can, have something valuable to offer, as described in 2) above.  Whatever you do, don’t base your reason for calling on YOUR needs:

“If we get your order this week, we’ll make our quarterly goal” – I hate this tactic when I am in a buying position. 

If timing is an issue for THEM, you have something useful:

“I know you wanted to get this project launched by [X date], I want to support you in meeting that objective.  What steps are left before you would be ready to get started?”

Having “flawless follow-up” (the FF piece of the Profit Generating Machine) is critical to your business success.  There are 5 more critical pieces, so if you have not yet claimed your free copy of The Profit Generating Machine, request yours to the right.

One more mindset comment before I move on to the other three essential elements: behave as though a sale to the prospect yours to lose. Think about it, you and your competitors have equal chance to win the business (and be the one to deliver the benefits) once a prospect has “raised a hand.” Follow up better than the others, and all the business that you deserve will be yours. For those opportunities that aren’t a fit, at least you had the chance to determine one way or the other.

O.k., so how do you follow up better than your competitors? Keep in mind just 3 key points: irresistible, immediate, and persistent.

1. Irresistible: if you take a cold, hard look at what you offer as a “next step” to a prospect who’s indicated interest in what you provide, is it truly irresistible? If it is not something of obvious benefit to them, you have room for improvement.
2. Immediate: a prospect who has stepped out of anonymity to contact you is likely at a peak point in their need. Letting their interest cool off serves no one – except your competitor who might be able to engage the prospect before you have a chance.
3. Persistent: remember, you’re the prize patrol. You are doing your prospects a disservice by not persistently pursuing the chance to see if the value you can deliver is a match for their needs.

I’ll be providing specific tips in upcoming posts to help you capture more of the sales that are yours to lose. For now, I encourage you to think about how well you do the above in your current follow up process. Any obvious areas of improvement?

• Easy ways to add contacts like signup forms, upload, and just type them in
• Insight into who opens the emails and clicks on links (services do this differently and the data doesn’t always tell the whole story — but it’s useful nonetheless)
• HTML templates to help you create a polished email message

I have been using Constant Contact for a few years and it has worked quite well for me.  I have no real complaints, but recently I ran into a few limitations that sent me off to check out other options.  The short story (’cause I’d like to spare you the long story) is that I am now using MailChimp.  Here are a few of the reasons:

1)  Here’s a big one — it’s FREE for a list of up to 2,000 and a total of up to 12,000 emails per month

2)  I can create multiple auto-responder streams.  In Constant Contact, if I wanted a person who requested one of my ebooks to get a series of emails afterward, I could do that.  But what if a new subscriber didn’t want the ebook, or requested something different that I wanted to correspond with a different auto-responder series?  In Constant Contact, I was S.O.L.  In MailChimp I can set up distinct lists and create (or not create) distinct auto-responder messages for each list.

3)  It has powerful list-segmenting tools too.  Want to re-send an email to just those who failed to open your prior message?  Easy.  Want your next email to only go to subscribers who joined within the last 30 days?  Easy.  Constant Contact: if you offer that feature, it wasn’t easy to find.

4)  Integrations.  MailChimp is a more open platform that can connect with a list of other programs.  This worked out great for integration with my CRM system.

So there you have it!  You can check them out at www.mailchimp.com.  If you need help, just give me a call.

Cheers!

Here is a short list of places we can all look for “free” leads that saw our bait but just didn’t bite.  These tips can apply to websites, brochures, advertisements, emails, and even our business cards.

Headline.  Almost everything in marketing starts with a headline — the subject line of an e-mail, the top of a datasheet, the header of a website and more. How are your headlines? The best ones connect with the underlying, burning issue that our best prospects face at an emotional level (be sure to check out my prior post on Breaking the Preoccupation Barrier) . We can also think of a headline as a “promise.” To what new state we can deliver our clients with our product or service? Paint the picture of the place they want to go in the headline and we have a winner.

What they get, not what we do. With a headline that grabs attention, the content of our message (be it a video, text and an advertisement or e-mail, images, etc.) will produce better results for us if it describes the benefits our clients get, not the content of what we do or the methods of how we do it.

Testimonials.  “Social proof” is a powerful force.  No one wants to be the “sucker” who experimented with an unproven product or service and got burned.  Demonstrate that we have helped others get what they wanted or where they wanted to go, and new prospects will feel more comfortable.  Have our happy clients or customers tout the benefits of doing business with us, and we will have even better results.  Testimonials about our product or service can go on the home page of our web site, on a brochure, in an email newsletter, even in our email signature.

Next topic, taking advantage of these principles with an effective call-to-action.

Our challenge is to get them from where they currently, past the neutral zone and into a more receptive frame of mind concerning what we want to communicate to them.  When we interrupt people from what they’re engaged in, whether verbally or in print, they automatically and subconsciously ask themselves these four questions:

1. Why are you bothering me?
2. So what? Who cares?
3. Why should I believe you? In other words, “What’s in it for me?”
4. Why should I do something about this now?

If we can’t give good answers to those questions, and do it very quickly, our chance of getting them to give us any more than a cursory look or listen will rapidly vanish.  A proven way to dramatically increase our chances of getting and holding the attention of our best prospects is to connect with what they desire (that we can help them with, of course) at an emotional level.  Facts, figures, and features usually don’t cut it.  So what do I mean by an emotional level?  I personally find the breakdown of seven emotions provided by Denny Hatch in his book “Method Marketing” to help considerably:

1. Greed — getting more of something
2. Exclusivity — being one of the few that own something or belong to something
3. Salvation — being saved or rescued from something negative or harmful
4. Fear — being afraid of missing out on something or having something negative happen
5. Guilt — feeling remorseful about doing or not doing something
6. Anger — being upset, irritated or mad about something happening or not happening
7. Flattery — made to feel good about something you did or you have

So take a look at your marketing, are you successfully breaking the preoccupation barrier by connecting with your audience on the “wavelength” of one of the above emotions?  If you’re not sure, I encourage you to request a copy of “The Seven Levers of Profit Growth” (to the right of this post) for more ideas.

Next post, generating more leads without spending a dime!

1. A time-limited incentive — ever get a pizza delivered? What is attached to the box? Usually, you will find both a menu and a coupon to buy your NEXT pizza.  The coupon, of course, isn’t valid forever — they put an expiration date on it. So you haven’t even eaten the pizza you just ordered, and they are already planting the seed for your next purchase! How can you apply this idea to your business?
2. A loyalty program — the above strategy works great for many types of businesses (you will have to put your own twist on it) but your client is probably inundated with offers from your competitors as well. How should our pizza shop combat coupon overload? Reward loyalty. In its simplest form all they would have to do is offer a free pizza for every X number ordered (“buy 9 and the 10th is free!”).  Now when holding coupons from two different pizza places, our shop owner’s clients are likely to come back again and again because their loyalty is rewarded.
3. Verify the benefit of the last purchase — you probably hear it all the time, the key is in the follow up.  But how can you call again without being a nuisance? Well your first follow up call should be to verify that your client is truly receiving the benefit of your product or service.  Delivering the computer or painting someone’s living room is not the end.  WHY did they want your product or service? After some time has passed, pick up the phone and find out if they got what they wanted.  Are they now more productive with the faster computer? Do they feel better about inviting guests to their home because of their great-looking living room? Follow up to make sure your clients are truly realizing the benefits of their purchase, and you’ll likely stir up more sales.
4. Subscription or membership — would your clients benefit from an ongoing service from your business? What if you could stop chasing them to make additional sales and instead have regular revenue on a monthly or quarterly basis that you could count on? List the kinds of ways your product or service could be used regularly, then look around you for subscription ideas.  They are everywhere: wine clubs, retainer-based consulting services, maintenance services, product replenishment, etc.

These are just a few ideas to get you started. The goal? Strengthening your relationships with your best clients, while delivering more value and receiving more business in the process.  Additional ideas?  Please share!

I have recently given a few free workshops (sponsored by the Contra Costa Small Business Development Center and the San Ramon Chamber of Commerce).  In them I outlined how to increase profits without relying so heavily on generating new leads. 

Check out the 4 minute clip above for an overview of what else you need to be doing to increase profits other than slogging it out trying to generate new leads from cold suspects.

Ah, the cocktail party question.  How well do you do with it?  Ever wish you had a better answer at that chamber mixer or networking lunch?  There is lots of good advice out there to help you, and I encourage you to soak it all up.  There is nothing more important than answering that simple question.

In fact, I contend that your internal and external answers to that question form the basis of all of your marketing and selling success — it is that fundamental.  There is a simple reason we all stumble over that question…

It’s the wrong question!

Don’t be fooled, it’s a trap.  A perfectly innocent trap laid by well-intentioned people, but a trap nonetheless.  As I have talked about in this blog many times, we should not focus our message on the products or services we provide (what we do), but should instead focus on the benefits our clients realize by working with us (what they get).  Answer the question “what do you do?” and you end up right where you don’t what to be.

Here is the question you wish they’d ask:

“What is the ultimate result your clients experience by doing business with you?”

So what can you do about it?  Don’t answer the actual question…pretend he or she asked the other one.  Here is an illustration using my own business:

Innocent conversationalist:  “So, what do you do?”

Andy:  “I develop marketing and selling strategies for small business owners.”  Or even worse “I’m a marketing consultant.”

Innocent conversationalist:  “{silent groan} Oh, I think I hear someone calling me.  Nice to meet you Alfred.”

So here is another scenario:

Innocent conversationalist:  “So, what do you do?”

Andy:  {silently translates question to be “What is the ultimate result your clients experience by doing business with you?”}  “I help business owners create more profitable companies that require less of their time, energy and stress.”

Innocent conversationalist:  “Really, how do you do that?”

Not only is it a more powerful way to answer the question, it starts a conversation by making it natural for the other person to ask “how?”  Another way to think about this situation is to not talk about what you do and how you do it.  Instead, talk about what your clients get and why they’re excited about it.

Moreover, when submitted for online distribution, it helps your web presence as well. Include some links to your web site in your release and voila — you have backlinks from reputable web sites that post it, adding “juice” to your SEO efforts.  A few keys to developing a successful press release:

1. Make it newsworthy.  As much as your new product or service excites you, is it relevant and exciting to others?  An important aim of your press release is to get some attention from writers (traditional news and blogs alike).  Be sure to test your message on friends, clients, advisers, etc.  Does your “news” help people resolve a problem?  Is it related to a “current” issue?  Bottom line, think like a reporter.
2. Get it out.  Simply posting your press release to your web site may help you stay positioned as a viable, active business to your existing visitors, but it doesn’t help you get additional exposure and traffic.  Submit your release to relevant sites, or use a service like PRNewswire or Free Press Release to get it out there.
3. Follow up.  You can’t make someone write about the topic of your release.  If you’re calling writers and professional bloggers, they have busy schedules, deadlines, etc., and pestering them will only guarantee your position at the bottom of their pile.  However, you can use their busy-ness to your advantage — outline the potential “angle” for an article they could write and leave a short message on voicemail and a brief email.  Don’t keep after them, just drop that suggestion and only work with the responses you get. You may hit the right person at the right time who is happy to have a story idea handed to them.

I have put together a simple report to help you create the right message and get your business the exposure you’d like via a press release.  This includes a MS Word template and samples of well-written press releases.  If you’d like it, just drop your email in the form below and I will send you a copy.  Not sure if a press release is right for you?  Check the box for a free consultation, and we’ll set up a time to talk about your circumstance.  I’ll help you figure out the right plan for you.