Effective Customer Communications
Effective Customer Relations Management (CRM) begins with good communication with your potential, and ongoing, customers. From the first time you contact your customers, it is important to maintain communication with them in order to increase your chances for making sales and creating ongoing loyal customers.
With potential customers, many companies send information to each hot prospect as soon as possible, but after this first contact, they fail to send any further information. When you don’t follow up with potential clients with additional information within a sufficient time frame, you lose many prospective sales. It is necessary to follow up because potential clients, who may have been very interested in your product or service, might lose your contact info or might have been too busy to purchase when they received your first message. Frequently, potential customers purposely postpone buying in order to find out if you will follow up and prove that you will provide superior customer service. If you fail to send additional information, these potential clients will take there business elsewhere.
In order to maintain good communication with your clients and potential customers, you must design a follow-up system and be dedicated to it—every day. It is important that your system should use personalized letters to your clients in a timely fashion.
One technique commonly used is the “List Technique” which simply lists the contact information of anyone who requested information about a product or service. You simply mass e-mail newsletters to all of the people on the list. This method may create a sale or two here and there, but all in all it is an ineffective system.
The List Technique doesn’t really work because, first of all, it isn’t consistent. The mass e-mails are sent only when something new is happening in the company, which may be exciting to you, but most customers won’t think too much about it.
Second, the List Technique fails to give particular information about the products or services that each costumer is really interested in.
Finally, this technique can cause your customers to become frustrated or annoyed by your messages because the messages seem to be generic junk mail sent to a large list of people. This can sometimes cause more harm than good because it discourages people from buying from you more than it heightens their interest.
The key to designing an effective system for contacting potential clients is to pre-write your messages to be personalized and send multiple messages at set intervals. Many companies that use this technique have found that sales have doubled for various products. Although this method takes more planning and preparation to implement than the List Technique, the results are much greater.
You can use the LeadMaster to help set up this system and begin setting the intervals for sending messages or contacting your potential customers with more information. The first step is to develop the follow up messages you would like to use for your products. Be sure to emphasize the benefits of using your products or service rather than simply describing what they are. The second message you send following the initial contact will mark the beginning of the follow up process, and should include more detail than your first message. Be sure to send it about 24 hours after the first message to keep your products and services fresh in the prospect’s mind.
The 3rd and 4th messages should be shorter with lists of benefits and uses of your products or service. Use a layout that your customers can easily skim and still get the main point of the message. You should send these messages about two to four days apart.
The 5th and 6th messages need to have a sense of urgency in order to encourage the potential customer to purchase now instead of later. Give them a special offer that will heighten their interest and persuade them to order as soon as possible. In order to not begin annoying the customer, be sure to send these messages no sooner than 4 days apart.
The last couple of messages you send should be written as a question. Ask the customer why he/she hasn’t purchased yet? Really aim to get a response, and question whether the product is too expensive, not the right type or color, or whether the customer is simply looking for something else. This will be valuable information to you in the future, because it is likely that they will not purchase from you.
Although this process seems complicated and the timing hard to narrow down, LeadMaster will help you automate when reminders will be sent to you or your employees to send these follow-up messages. You will be able to better maintain constant communication with your potential clients and effectively apply the Customer Relations Management principles that will increase profits and create loyal customers for life.
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