Follow Up Messages and Confirmation Calls in Marketing

Your customers want to know you care about them. But not in that way…

Once your marketing and advertising has opened the lines of communication, you have to make sure your customer knows you care, you really, really care about her business.

Keep her engaged.

Most of your competition is lazy (I said most, not the top 3). And in today’s weak economy many of them are cutting back on their marketing and advertising.

To your customer, it looks and feels like the competition doesn’t care about her anymore. Or she feels that your competitors only care about a quick flip.

And no one wants to be flipped.

But that’s what most sales, advertising, and marketing books spend their time on, don’t they? How to sell. How to pull in “new” customers and how to prospect for “new” business.

New business is important of course. But pay attention to what you have in hand, now – your current and past customers.

Here are 4 areas to pay attention to. Improve these and your business will improve too.

1. Confirmation
2. Follow up
3. Survey
4. Bonuses

Confirmation Calls

Let’s say, your sales depends on face-to-face interaction or another similar method of direct communication to close the deal.

Maybe you’re in B2B sales or your product is complex/expensive and requires human interaction to complete the sale.

Set the sales appointment and “Confirm” the appointment.

Don’t show up (in person, or by phone, or webninar, etc) if your prospect isn’t going to be there. It’s a waste of time and productivity.

Sometimes things come up that can’t be avoided. But you should work just as hard to make the  appointment stick … as you do to get the appointment.

Think of it like this: Appointment – 50/50 chance of a sale. No appointment – 100% guarantee no sale.

You spend a good amount of time and budget advertising for strangers to call you with the intent to buy. You should spend almost as much attention (and possibly budget) to make sure your appointments stick.

Engage her and make sure she knows you care about her business.

Surprise bonus -

Have someone else confirm your appointments for you. It could be an assistant, a virtual assistant, a spouse, a teenage or young adult child, someone else in the office that you can exchange favors, etc.

Then offer the prospect a surprise bonus if the appointment is kept. And/or make them a special offer if they make a buying decision at the appointment. Plus, if you offered a bonus to make the appointment, make sure you remind them about it during the confirmation call.

Some examples:

a) “…by the way, we’re giving away a XXX this week at all of our first time appointments. Since your meeting is tomorrow afternoon you qualify. Make sure you remind Bob about it at your meeting…”

b) “… this Mary from Bob’s office… Want to let you know if you decide to purchase during your meeting… We’ve authorized Bob to give you XXX in free add-ons…”

c) A friend recently got Lasik eye surgery. She set a Free consultation and Lasik eye evaluation. The doctor’s office called twice to confirm the appointment. Two different staff called and gave the exact pitch – to the word – and exact inflection on the same words.

“… Hi this is XXX… Confirming your FREE consultation with Dr. XXXX on Saturday at 8am. If you need to reschedule your FREE consultation please call toll-FREE at…”

My friend showed up on time, 8am on a Saturday. And the waiting room was full of other potential patients, who also wanted the FREE consultation.

I’ll go over the next three areas (Follow up, Survey, and Bonuses) of this four part article in upcoming posts…

I’m on a dealine. So check back in a day or two.