Two very simple follow up ideas for Speakers and Presenters. Yes even Speakers and Presenters need to follow up! This week I had the wonderful opportunity to speak at the Encinitas Rotary group about using Social Media to follow up and engage customers. I have to admit the setting for this discussion was perfect, the room was right on the water with a wall of glass facing the ocean. The room felt like the ocean was coming right in with each incoming wave!
After the discussion I had spent some time outside listening, viewing, and enjoying the beautiful day. When I was about to leave I decided to make this short video on follow up to share with you how I will follow up with the members of this group. Here is the video:
Two simple steps:
Send an email to each person thanking them for the opportunity to speak at their meeting
Mail each person a thank you card
As a Speaker and Presenter why would I want to take these two follow up steps? I can think of many great reasons but I will focus on the basics. It’s about building upon the relationship I have started. This group just listened to me talk for an hour. To this group I would be considered an expert or go to person in social media, follow up, and referral strategies. The opportunity from speaking is to continue the relationship! If I do this effectively I will naturally receive clients, referrals, and additional speaking engagements.
Are you a speaker, presenter, or trainer? Please let me know the methods you are using to follow up with your audience by leaving a comment.
Follow up is crucial in creating relationships with your clients and prospects. The number one reason business owners and sales people give me when I ask them why they don’t follow up is “I don’t have time”. When I hear this I think to myself you can’t afford not to have time! I also think the excuse of “I don’t have time” is really the business owner or sales professional self sabotaging their own success. I have discussed many systems and follow up tools to help you automate the follow up process which makes the excuse of not having time seem crazy.
Think about this… If you are a business owner or sales professional how many new clients did you receive last year? Is it 10, 50, or 100 new clients? Now approximate the total sales or commissions you received from each client and divide this by the total number of new clients from last year. What is the number or average value of each client? Is it $200, $2,000, $20,000, or $200,000 in sales or commissions?
It does not matter what the number is. What is important is that you understand what the value of one client or prospect is to you. For example let’s say the value of one client is $2,000. The next time you think to yourself I don’t have the time to follow up realize this thought can be a potential loss of $2,000! If you retain your average client for 5 years this would be $10,000!
The number one reason you will lose a customer is not from price or a competitor knocking on their door every week. The number one reason is the feeling of indifference. Clients start looking elsewhere when they feel unappreciated. This can easily be solved by having a simple follow up system in place. Imagine if you implemented a system that could not only insure your clients felt appreciated but would also increase the lifetime value of each customer. Increasing the life of your customers by just one year or more could make a huge difference in your business.
I encourage you to leave a comment and let me know what your follow up system is. Are you following up with email, newsletters, post cards, greeting cards, phone calls? What are you doing to keep strong relationships with your customers and clients? If you need help creating a follow up system or just would like me to evaluate your follow up system please contact me.
Today I was listening to a great podcast by Dr. Ivan Misner the founder of BNI on Networking Now about following up with your clients and creating touch points. Dr. Misner offered 6 steps in creating touch points with your prospects and customers. After listening to the pod cast I ended up with seven steps!
Step One – Spread out your contacts! Many people do great follow up in the first few months of making the sale and then the follow up seems to drop off. Maintaining consistent follow up or touch points through phone conversations, live appointments, email, newsletters, and greeting cards should be the goal.
Step Two – Train your clients to expect to hear from you. Be consistent! If it makes since for your business or product to meet with them once per quarter than make sure you always meet with them once per quarter. Your clients will begin to plan on hearing from you and will make time to see you.
Step Three – Make each contact lead to the next contact. Let your customer know when they will hear from you again. If you are meeting every quarter, ideally you would schedule the next quarterly meeting before leaving. If you need to follow up with additional information make sure to let them know when they can expect from you.
Step Four – Assume responsibility to make contact. As the sales person or business owner it is your responsibility to maintain the relationship. Remember customers who don’t feel appreciated or feel they are not being taken care of will naturally start looking for someone else. Keeping consistent contact and taking responsibility for the relationship will help your to maintain your customers for life!
Step Five – Invite customers to networking events. If you have found a great networking event make sure to invite a few of your customers for the next one. Invite them to your BNI group or a local chamber of commerce. If you are in Rotary or Kiwanis invite them to your next meeting. Seeing your customers every week or every month at a service organization or networking event will help you create a stronger relationship. Not to mention if you have found new clients at these groups your customers may as well.
Step Six – Create a plan and stick to it. If you are consistently following up with your customers your customers will naturally start contacting you. The key is to not break your consistency. When your clients contact your don’t restart the clock or change your pattern. Stay on your same touch point schedule and this will just encourage more interaction.
Step Seven – Once you have your plan implement a system to make this easy. For each element of your follow up or touch points do whatever you can to put this into a system. Systems mean automatic! Automatically your news letter will go out every month. Automatically your outlook calendar or salesforce.com reminder will pop up. By having a system you guarantee consistency in your actions.
It’s important to remember following up with prospects is a must but having consistent follow up or touch points with your customers is equally as important. The goal for this follow up or touch point system is not to sell. The goal is to create conversations. The conversation might be:
How can I help you?
Are you satisfied with our product or service?
I was thinking about your business today and thought of a few additional ideas for you.
How can I make this service work better for you?
Through conversations you will create stronger relationships. Through these relationships you will receive more businesses and the best part is you will receive referrals!
Are you using a system now? Please leave a comment and tell us what are you using in your business for follow up and touch points!
When I ask a new contact if they are on LinkedIn the common response I hear is yes I am but I have no idea how to use it! LinkedIn is a great Social Network for business but for many people they just don’t understand what it can do for them or have any plan in place to really engage the people they are connected to. So today I decided to talk about how I handle new contacts on LinkedIn.
For me of course it all comes down to follow up! Follow up is the key to really get things moving on LinkedIn! So what do I mean my follow up?
This week I set aside some time to go through my LinkedIn invites. In the end I accepted invitations from about 100 pending connections. After viewing each connection request I sent a simple email to each new LinkedIn connection asking them for a 20 minute meeting with the goal of learning more about them and to explore how we might be able to help each other.
Here is the email I send out:
Hi Shane!
Thank you for connecting on LinkedIn! Let’s set up a 20 minute meeting to learn more about each other and our businesses. The goal would be to explore how we might help each other.
How does your schedule look for next week?
Alan Underkofler
My expectation is to have about 20 people accept my offer to talk on the phone and explore how we might help each other. Taking this one follow up step with each new LinkedIn connection allows you to start a relationship which leads to new business and referrals.
So there you have it, a very simple step to start the conversation with your LinkedIn connections. So tell me… What do you do to maximize your connections on LinkedIn?
On my last post I highlighted Make A Referral Week 2009. The goal was to generate 1,000 referrals to 1,000 deserving small businesses in one week. I am happy to report the goal was met and I am excited to see Referral Week happen again with a much larger goal!
This week I had the pleasure of talking to one of my favorite people Stuart Manley from ChannelPoint, Inc., a Toronto, ON human resource company specializing in cross border HR. After talking to Stuart I thought of another friend Art Kriegsmann. Art is the CEO of H.R. SERV., Inc. based in San Diego, CA. The conversation with Stuart prompted me to refer both Stuart and Art to each other. I referred them because they both specialize in different areas and could possibly be a great referral source for one another.
The example points out one of the most overlooked referrals we can make. We all love to receive direct referrals which will lead to a new client. Sometimes our best referrals are not a direct referral but someone who can continually give us referrals over time. Creating referral partners, power partners, or fantastic referral sources should be a major part of your referral strategy.
To create a referral source think about the businesses in your network who may serve your ideal client. Possibly a company you notice working with the same clients you have. Once you identify such a company or industry reach out to them and talk about the possibility of sending referrals to one another. This strategy could make the difference of your business maintaining sales this year or possibly growing another 10, 20, or 50 percent! And for those of you who may watch the news or if you happen to still read the paper… Yes I did say you can grow your business in this economy!
If you are still reading this post I have one question for you. Can I give you a referral?
Do you have a company or client you have been trying to reach? Do you know who your ideal client or referral partner is? How can I or the readers give you a referral? Leave your referral request as a comment and let’s see if we can help each other!
June 30, 2009 
Posted in Follow Up, Follow Up Ideas, Increase Referrals, Referral Marketing, Social Media 
No Comments » 
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=7a2a8091-37f8-4313-9bdb-10c27360f1b5)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=7dc4a6ad-de9b-4db0-8617-d9c71f9931fb)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=74cb7569-d98b-466e-9994-563d2e210497)
Recent Comments