Don’t Forget to Follow-Up!

Well, I made it back from seeing the Wizard and I didn’t even have to click my heels together three times! Actually, the play on Saturday was a lot of fun and my kids had a blast. My little girl was all excited to meet ‘Dorothy’ afterwards and my little guy was pumped to meet the Lion. It was definitely a memorable evening for me.

Today I wanted to share with you something that’s critical to your success in marketing your business. I know it’s something I don’t always do a great job of, but it’s one that I’ve been working diligently to improve on over the past few weeks. It’s one that is a requirement if you want to grow your business at all.

You see, 9 out of 10 times when you present an offer to a prospect, they’re not going to bite. As a result, unless you have some method for continually staying in contact to present valuable offers, you’ll only ever get 1 out of every 10 prospects. In fact, that numbers probably even closer to 1 out of every 20 or 30, depending on how razor sharp your marketing is.

The key to increasing that conversion rate is to continually follow up. Numerous studies have been done that show that it takes anywhere from five to seven contacts for a prospect or customer to buy. That means if you’re stopping after the first contact you’re losing a significant number of customers and potential profits.

Here are a few ways of following up you might want to consider incorporating into your business:

• When sending direct mail, don’t do one shot mailings. In other words, don’t just send one. Send multiple mailings to the prospect. What you’ll find is that you’ll get at least ½ of your respondents respond after the initial mailing.
• If you have a website and collect email addresses (which you should be doing), set up an autoresponder series. An autoresponder is a nifty tool that sends out preprogrammed email messages at specified intervals. You could set it up to send an email as soon as the person signs up, then 2 days later, then 4 days later, than 7 days later, and so on.
• Follow up with a phone call. Even though this one can be time consuming, studies show that following up with a courtesy phone call can increase conversion by 10x’s.
• Even if the prospect doesn’t respond to any of these initial efforts, continue to send them periodic communications, preferably educating them on your product or service. Consider sending a monthly newsletter that has some lawn care tips, maybe a favorite recipe, and an offer for one of your valuable services.

Once you’ve decided which of these follow-up methods you want to use, it’s then time to set up a system to automate the process. The system could be something as completely automated as an autoresponder series, or it could simply be a series of pre-written letters you send out at specified intervals.

No matter which follow-up method you chose, you should make the process as easily repeatable as possible. Have each step laid out and scheduled, and then follow it religiously. If you do, I promise you’ll see increased results right from the get-go.

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