Follow Up Success » Business Excellence

Creating Great Follow Up With Your Clients in 7 Simple Steps

Alan Underkofler — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 17:05:11 +0000

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!

Zappos Pays Employees to Quit!

Alan Underkofler — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 20:52:39 +0000

There was a great article in the current Inc. Magazine titled The Ultimate Business Tune-Up For Times Like These.

The article listed 23 things you can do right now to energize your employees, wow your customers, and get your business back on track. One of the ideas from a previous Inc. Start-Up Blog post was from a great company Zappos titled Pay employees to Quit!

During the first month of training, Zappos offers new employees $2,000 to quit, plus their time worked! This may sound crazy but to Zappos it’s a matter of costs… The cost of training an employee who is not happy or does not fit the company culture is far more than $2,000! Zappos wants people who are passionate about customer service and who love their company culture.

I know for me I am always attracted to companies who seem to have a passion for what they are doing. If I receive a follow up call from a new contact or someone who wants me to purchase their product I listen for the passion. How many times have you purchased from someone just because you felt inspired to support them? Have you ever been price shopping for a product and found a sales person or company who was so passionate that you decided to stop looking and just purchase? Do you see how valuable passion could be for you?

So if passion is so important to a company like Zappos it might be something you should consider as well. Whether you are an employee or the owner of a business or an entrepreneur passion is one of your best assets. Why not take a look at how you are doing in regards to passion. You might just find an opportunity to light the fire of passion within you!

Are you a Gary Vaynerchuk?

Alan Underkofler — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 20:11:06 +0000

Have you ever met someone who is filled with passion and enthusiasm? Passionate about their company, passionate about their job, passionate about their relationship, or possibly passionate about their cause… I mean real passion! So much passion and enthusiasm you might think it’s too much! This reminds me of one of the people I followed up with from LinkedIn this week. Lisa Marshall a communication specialist, speaker, and at one time accused of being too passionate! Lisa’s thoughts on this… “It is impossible to be too passionate”! I have to agree with her! Have you ever seen or heard Gary Vaynerchuk speak? Did you have the thought “I wish I was as passionate as Gary Vaynerchuk”? View a portion of this video with Gary Vaynerchuk speaking at Web 2.0 Expo this year.

Do you see the passion coming from Gary? Do you feel his enthusiasm for what he is doing? Are you thinking to yourself “I wish I was this passionate about something”? The thought in your mind should not be I wish I was… It should be why not? Why not live with the same passion and enthusiasm that Gary does? What is stopping you from doing this? The difference between living and believing with passion versus not is so dramatic! People who have passion and enthusiasm are like magnets. People want to be around passionate people!

Many times I have been told to tone down my passion and enthusiasm… I admit at times I have thought this was some kind of flaw and for years I would always keep myself in check. Now I realize this is one of my biggest assets. I love to get behind something I truly believe in with passion. Lots of passion! You can be passionate about your job, company, product, spouse, or your favorite cause. Find something in your life to be passionate about and then share with those around you.

So my last thought to you is if you have ever thought “I wish I could be as passionate as (fill in the blank), why not start now… Passion is something you can turn on and turn off.. Passion is a love for what you are doing or what you believe in. Passion is the one thing that will push you forward and keep you going, passion insures you reach your end goal. Passion is one of the elements of those who achieve greatness and those who do not. Passion is in you… It’s in all of us… We just need to recognize it, feel it, and let it run through us.

Attracting Positive Experiences Starts With Gratitude

Alan Underkofler — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 15:04:27 +0000

Tomorrow will be a wonderful day spent with family and friends as those in the United States spend the day talking, eating, and celebrating the Thanksgiving holiday.

For me this is a time of reflection. Thinking about the things I am grateful for in my life, reflecting on the moments in time which have created the memories that will last a lifetime.

Thanksgiving is a great opportunity to create a positive discussion with the ones you are spending time with. My favorite part of the many previous Thanksgivings is the thought of gratitude. What am I grateful for in my life right now? What do I have in my life to be thankful for? I encourage you to take a moment right now and reflect for yourself on this last year. Search for something to be grateful for. Think about how that makes you feel. It can be something big like a new baby, getting married, a new home, a new job, or a promotion at work! It can also as simple as getting together with family tomorrow, spending time with your children, or having a working car. Whatever you choose to be grateful for focus on the feeling you have when you think about it, carry this feeling for the entire day. No matter what happens keep this positive feeling all day. The result of you doing this will by default put the people around you in a mood of gratitude as well. By doing this you will inspire a positive attitude in those around you and it should make for a fantastic day!

For the business owners that happen to read this today. Many companies will allow their employees to leave early today. Some companies will work half the day; others will send people home a few hours early. Before you let your employees go today why not create an exercise of gratitude. Send an email or create a memo for the employees in the office to meet 30 to 45 minutes before the workday ends. At the meeting let everyone know you will be doing a simple exercise of gratitude, just one sentence on what you are grateful for right now. Let them know you do not want anything that has to do with work or their job, just something in their life they are grateful for. As the business owner or manager make sure you go first and keep it really simple. Quickly go around the room having everyone express something they are grateful for and skip anyone who can’t think of anything (you will have at least one). At the end thank everyone for sharing in the experience and send them home for the day to spend time with family and friends. This will have your employees leaving with a positive attitude as well as a positive reflection on you the business owner or manager. Remember your employees are an extension of your company both in and outside of the office. The benefits from doing this exercise will be different for everyone but will surly lead to more positive experiences.

While writing this my mind keeps wondering off to my positive experiences from the last year. I have so many things to be grateful for! The positive experience for me and the one moment in time that keeps coming up is an event that happened just last month. As it rains in San Diego this morning I keep thinking about the family I helped build a house for in Mexico. Right now this family is in a home where they do not have to worry about a makeshift roof leaking as they sleep. This family is experiencing the comfort of shelter, something so many in this world do not have. I am grateful for the experience of building this home and I am grateful for the home I am sitting in while writing right now. Need help feeling inspired? Start your day by visiting Inspire Me Today. Gail Goodwin, founder of Inspire Me Today offers amazing high-quality daily inspiration which is a great way to start each day. Make sure to visit the Inspire Me Today Blog which also has great inspiration and positive writings by Gail.

Please share with me what you are grateful for by adding a comment to this post! If you are a business owner and take advantage of the gratitude exercise please comment on your experience with your employees.

For those outside of the United States I hope you have a wonderful week full of positive experiences. For those in the United States I wish for you the happiest of Thanksgivings!

Reasons and Excuses to Insure Your Business Fails

Alan Underkofler — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 19:47:18 +0000

Last year at I woke up at 4am with my phone ringing and a slight sound of sirens in the background. My house was smoky and as I ran into the living room ash was flying inside my house through the skylights. This was the morning of the 2007 San Diego fires. At the same time thousands of my neighbors were evacuating from their homes in Rancho Bernardo. This is a day I will never forget! One of these neighbors was my friend Jay I mentioned earlier this week.

So why am I bringing up the San Diego fires today? In my last post I used my friend Jay Riordan as an example of a business having a positive perspective in the current marketplace. Today I thought I would share with you another part of the story. Jay’s business, Dream Design Builders is doing really well, at the same time Jay’s competitors are downsizing and closing. Jay’s positive perspective in the current marketplace is incredible but maybe you are thinking to yourself “I am different” or “this is great for Jay but I have had this happen or that happen this year”.

Jay Riordan, Holding a charred photo rescued from the ashes

So here is the rest of the story… After the fires went through Rancho Bernardo my neighbors and I started finding ways back to our homes. I was one of the lucky ones… My home was standing with no damage, my friend Jay was not so fortunate… When Jay was able to get near his street he was seeing smoldering homes everywhere including his own home.

The reason why I mention this is for you to think about your reasons or excuses you might be using right now. Jay had every reason to buy into the negativity of the media. Jay could have been fully consumed by the emotions of his recent losses. Jay could have placed all of his attention on rebuilding his home and letting his business suffer. All of these reasons would have been completely justified!

Next time you think about the reason why you are not succeeding or why your business is not growing at the rate you would like, think about the reasons you are using to justify your story. Think about the possibility of just changing your thinking.

Think about my friend Jay, who chose to package the emotional charge around losing his home to a fire, into an amazing energy focused on building an even more beautiful home and a thriving business. Isn’t that better than anything even small bit of negativity might bring you? The power of how you handle negativity in your life is truly yours.