Chances are that if I met you at a networking event tomorrow and told you that I had a contact who was really interested in your products and services, you’d give them a call right away – right? (At least I hope you would anyway), but too often when I’m talking to small business owners, I find they don’t follow-up in any other way. We meet potential contacts and customers continuously, but if we don’t follow-up with them, chances are they’re not going to contact you.
Why not? Surely you made an impression with them?
Well, maybe you did. Maybe they had all the good intentions of contacting you. They might have seen your advert in the paper, read a press release or met you at a networking event and thought to themselves “I must get in touch”.
But unfortunately all of us have so much going on in our lives that after that fleeting interest, thoughts turn back to what’s for dinner, I have to go and pick the kids up and so on.
Unless you find some way to contact them in the future, it’s not very often that they’re going to remember to add you to their list.
So, where do you start? Well, following up with people is a two part process. Firstly, you need to get their contact details in order to be able to contact them at a future date (more about this in a minute) and then you actually need to follow up with them. Putting out an advert, sending out a flyer or giving a talk is simply not enough these dates – how do you know who’s interested enough to want you to contact them again? How do you know who’s seen your advert?
How do you get hold of contact details?
In every marketing activity that you do from now on, you should have a think about how you get hold of people’s contact details. Ideas that you can use to get them include running a competition; saying you’ll send them a tips sheet; voucher systems; membership schemes and so on. If you’re feeling creative, try and list 10 ways that you could get contact details.
So, instead of putting an advert in a paper, run a competition instead. If people enter it, they’re telling you that they’re interested in what you’ve got to provide. Instead of just giving a talk, say you have a newsletter with lots more tips in it – if they give you their contact details, you’ll happily subscribe them. And so on.
At networking events you attend, try and get hold of an attendee list so you can contact them later – even if it doesn’t contain their contact details, you can always look them up on the internet.
OK, you now have their contact details. The next stage is to see how interested they are. Try contacting them by phone, email and don’t forget about fax too and see if they’d like to have a quick chat on the phone with you about how you could work together – you can always meet up if there’s something there.
Try sending them a regular newsletter with discounts and offers for your products and services included in there. Send them a loyalty card where if they use you 5 times, they get a session free.
What I’m saying here is put a system in place. Your system should go something like this.
1) Identify a marketing method 2) Think about and put in place a way of capturing people’s contact details.
3) Once you have the contact details, follow-up with them on a regular basis to see how interested they actually are.
And remember my rule of 3 – if you’ve contacted the same person three times and they haven’t become a customer, chances are they’re not interested. Put them into your system to be contacted again by email in 6 months time. This will stop you hassling them and make sure they’re regularly followed up to see how they’re getting on.
Following up with people takes a bit of practice, but it’s well worth it – I’ve seen clients double their turnover just be increasing the following up side of their business.
I’ve got loads more information on following up in my e-book “Get Clients Now” – just go to www.exceptionalthinking.co.uk for more details.
Helen Dowling runs Exceptional Thinking (www.exceptionalthinking.co.uk ) which provides help and advice for start-ups and small businesses on their marketing, market research and business plans.
To learn more about this author, visit Helen Dowling's Website.
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