TONY RUBLESKI, GUEST BLOGGER
I’d like to share with you Five Proven Ways To Stay In Touch With Key Customers, Prospects and Referral Partners
I’ve been traveling a lot lately and I wanted to give you an in-depth article of immense value, if applied, to make up for lost time.
I’m absolutely amazed at the large number of businesses that take their customers, prospects and referral partners for granted. In the non-profit world the same mentality is often seen in relation to donors, volunteers and key board members. I know I sound like a broken record to many loyal readers of this blog, but here are three key reasons why tightening the bond of communication with those who influence, shape or spend money with you is a smart marketing strategy:
1. Inexpensive versus pure cold prospecting efforts
2. Great way to differentiate
3. Produces repeat business and referrals
If these three outcomes don’t get your marketing mind cranking and your bank balance dancing with glee, then I’m worried that nothing will. Yes, I know it seems like common sense to follow up with people and many of you do it well. I read your emails carefully and look at everything you send my direction with high priority. Here’s the challenge though: We live in a sped up, digital, MTV world, where manners and follow up are often forgotten or given little justice in the commerce arena.
How do I arrive at this line of thinking? Easy. Look around at how RARE it is when we truly feel wanted, respected and thanked for our business, time, contributions or ideas. For most of us an occasional thank you would be nice for our patronage, but even that seems to be in short supply these day.
Let’s focus on five ways to improve follow up within your own organization because it’s a huge problem that costs organizations millions of dollars daily in lost sales, referral opportunities and growth regardless if they’re for-profit or non-profit.
Ok, enough of my rant! Let’s pull up to the Mind Capture marketing buffet and dig in before the risk arises that these ideas get cold or someone tries to distract you from achieving better customer relationships and marketing excellence.
1. Create and use a monthly newsletter or eletter. This is challenging for many businesses because they assume that they have to do an eight-page full color newsletter mailing each time, or that they don’t have the time or know-how to pull it off on a consistent basis. I’d like to challenge this type of thinking. Start simple with a two page update and get it in motion. As you get more and more newsletters done, it gets easier and becomes a priority. If you’re not a good writer, hire a local freelance writer or local college student to edit and shape your ideas, post-it-notes or scribbled messages containing your ideas and notes. I’m not joking. There are lots of great folks in your area or available online that do a great job and are a steal to pay versus you or one of your key staffers spending hours to launch, edit and get the newsletter done and out the door.
Let’s look at why EVERY business or non-profit should be using an eletter.Folks, email is essentially free and plugging your rolodex into a simple, user friendly eletter program is easy. I’ll save you some time searching and highly recommend that you explore Constant Contact. It passes the Tony test. If I think it’s easy to use, then you or someone on your team will breeze through setting it up and using it on an ongoing basis.
2. Send thank you notes. I’ll go a step further and make this easy. Grab a pen (Seems that most salespeople have forgotten what these look like unless they’re trying to get a signature on a contract!) and write down three lists that contain your top 10 customers, referral partners and prospects. Pick up some postcards, stationary, and fire off a few hand-written notes.
If you’re lost for words I’m going to make a recommendation that I strongly suggest you investigate for yourself. Check out Send Out Cards. Yes, some of you know of them, or I bet have received one and had no idea that you can use this as a resource within your own business. I use them and have become a raving fan. I’m tough to impress sometimes and this product solves a TON of follow up issues. Since there’s more to the story and we have three more strategies so here’s what I’ve decided to do. If you’d like more information and a FREE gift account of 5 cards, please contact Kim at our office directly at: k.mcg@sbcglobal.net.
3. Continually roll out new promotions or programs. I believe that once trust has been established and earned with a key customer or referral partner you owe it to them and your continued success to offer additional products or services that improve and add value to their life. One of the biggest sins many businesses make besides being boring, and lifeless with their marketing, is a lack of consistent follow up by not making new offers or announcements to encourage their customers to come back again or refer people they know who may have an interest in what they do.
Here are a few great shortcut questions to ask yourself in advance when rolling out potential new offers to your customers:
*Will it save them time?
*Is the new offer consistent with our core business strengths to increase the odds
of repeat business with them or referrals from others our customers know in their
contact sphere?
*What are logical upsale opportunities we’re missing based on what customers
are telling us they’d like to see us offer that we’re currently referring to someone
else?
4. Use client focused events to reconnect. Event marketing is a huge business and the trends show no sign of this slowing down. Hosting your own client appreciation events is one of many events that I recommend you add into your marketing mix. Here are a few simple suggestions when putting together an event for key customers and contacts:
*Make it fun
*Give away free stuff
*Make it convenient
*Avoid making it into an infomercial – yes it can be tempting 
*Encourage your customers to bring a friend or business associate so you can meetfuture customers or referral partners
*Make it worth their time by adding something educational in nature that would be timely and of interest
5. Pick up the phone. Some business owners and marketing folks would be stunned to realize that, a. the phone works b. email gets lost c. you’ll uncover a lot of things to help you build better relationships versus using email only.
I look at so many business and non-profit leaders who use email like two third-grade kids passing notes while the teacher isn’t looking. Many are either afraid to pick up the phone or claim, “I’m just so busy Tony.” Yeah, I’m sure if they wanted to place an order and demanded that you call them, you’d suddenly find time in your busy life to pick up the phone. Think about that last statement very carefully. I know you can’t spend an hour on the phone with each of them, that’s why you poll and call your top customers and referral partners first. Here are a few smart ways to maximize phone time:
*Thank them up front
*Ask them a couple of smart questions
*See how they’re doing first and if possible offer of something of value related to their business or life that’s not a heavy handed sales pitch
*Mention that you only have a few minutes but wanted to pick up the phone versus sending an email message
There you have it. Apply these five strategies and you’ll soon be reaping the benefits of better client relationships, repeat business and referral opportunities!