There is an old saying that says, ‘The fortune is in the follow-up.” It’s become an old saying for good a reason: it’s true. Following up with customers and clients can be one of the most important business actions a business owner can take.
There are many ways to follow up, all of them being important in their own unique ways. One of these is to follow up with potential and past customers. This can be done very easily through sending out a regular customer newsletter.
To send out a customer newsletter, or do any form of email marketing for that matter, it is recommended to have an autoresponder service. This will make sending the newsletters very easy. They can even be loaded into the system several months or even years in advance.
It is no secret that people lead busy lives and they cannot always remember to do all the things they want or need to do. Simply sending out a little email, reminding them that your business is still there may be all it takes to stimulate a sale.
Following up with customers can also make them feel special and appreciated. Offering them a special customer appreciation sale is one way to do this. This can, again, be done through email marketing. Another twist is to send your customer an actual card in the postal mail.
As you can imagine from your own buying habits, when you feel appreciated by a business, you are more likely to buy more product from that business. When you feel ignored or unappreciated, you are more likely to avoid that business.
One reason that some business owners fall behind on following up with their customers is due to a lack of time. If this sounds familiar, setting up some systems to keep things flowing can make life easier.
This could include buying pre-written newsletters and hiring a virtual assistant to personalize them before loading them into an autoresponder, or having a ghostwriter create custom-made newsletters.
If you have a service-based business, it is also very important to follow up with potential clients on quotes and proposals you’ve submitted. When a person contacts you for potential work, they may be at a starting point where they are just trying to sort out their project.
Following up will let them know you are interested in working with them and remind them that they need to hurry up and hire you before someone else does.
That doesn’t mean you have to be pushy at all. Just sending a quick note to let them know that you currently have space on your calendar for them, but also reminding them that your spaces fill up fast, is all that is needed.
Once a business owner implements a regular follow-up routine into their business, they will open up the potential for repeat business and more profits.