The Ultimate Sales Machine - Chet Holmes [115]
More market share at every mutually beneficial opportunity
You are a major part of why they buy, which means that you must reiterate your connection in your follow-up correspondence (examples coming up). But you also want them to stay hot on your product or service. If you used the techniques you’ve learned in this book and presented the clients with a ton of useful information from your core story, they stand a better chance of remembering why they bought your product. An excellent brochure or “leave-behind” helps as well.
The more you remind them, the less chance they will ever forget why they bought. Putting the hot buttons, the pain points that made them want to buy in the first place, in your follow-up letters and phone conversations is one way to reduce the cool-off factor. If you come away from a meeting or phone call without knowing those hot buttons, you are in trouble.
As you learned in the previous chapter, successful companies know every aspect of a client’s criteria for making a purchase. The deeper your understanding of your clients, the better the opportunity to help them and the more market share you will acquire. Your goal is to become such a bright spot in your clients’ day that they actually look forward to your calls, letters, and emails. Keep things exciting and interesting. You must become part of your clients’ lives in order to stay in their top-of-mind awareness. This requires massive, diligent, and entertaining follow-up.
Make the relationship fun and entertaining by incorporating into your follow-up such things as cards, letters, games, jokes, and gifts. For business-to-consumer companies, you need to have a constant touch system to keep the relationship strong. This may mean a VIP card that your clients can use to get express ser vice or special benefits. It may be personalized invitations to come to a special VIP sale preview event or to remind your clients of their next scheduled appointment. With the Internet, this can be inexpensive or even free. Again, it should be stressed that “education-based marketing” is an excellent method of staying in touch. No matter what you sell, you can find valuable information that your client will appreciate receiving.
Every company today should have a major initiative to build email databases and relationships with its buyers. Drive as many folks to your Web site as you can, as often as you can, and for every reason you can think of.
Let’s look at a practical example: At the time of this writing, I went to the official Web sites of Disney, Warner Bros., and Universal Studios. Looking around, I could not easily find anywhere to subscribe to be on an email list to receive promotions. If I owned a studio, the most prominent graphic on the Web site would be an offer that would capture data to begin a relationship with every fan coming to the site. One of my goals would be to collect millions of fan emails. This would hedge my investment, giving me an opportunity to promote my movies in advance and build an even stronger brand with moviegoers. The home page should give ethical bribes to fans to get their email: “Enter your email address and win a chance to have dinner with a star.” Surely, you could create dozens of juicy opportunities that would make folks want to give you their email addresses. As you learned in Chapter Seven, create a “community,” a great place to visit and get involved. Imagine the power of giving fans the possibility of tracking a movie for months and building excitement to see it on that critical opening weekend. All free over the Web. No media costs.
No matter what you sell, you can create a better relationship with your buyers using the Internet. But the main point is to have constant follow-up efforts with buyers—especially with those who did not buy.
Set Yourself Up for Great Follow-up
Rule: Your follow-up is only as good as your first six steps and you should be considering your follow-up during every step of the sales process.
Here are the goals and questions that should guide