How to Get More Customers by Staying in Touch
Earlier this week we posted an article on how to get more customers. This post follows up that article adding an additional suggestion on how to get more customers. Once you know who your customers are, focus on inbound marketing and adopt a revenue generation software platform such as Lead Liaison’s, you’ll be in great position to execute on another critical piece – staying in touch. Let’s highlight how to do that.
Staying in Touch Using Lead Nurturing
Some marketers call it drip marketing, others call it lead nurturing. Both are very different. Lead nurturing is aware of a prospects online activity whereas drip marketing is ignorant to a prospects online activity. Regardless of the differences, they both share a common underlying benefit – allowing businesses to stay in touch with their prospects and customers.
Let’s take an example of how important this is from one of our own recent experiences. We’ve been looking for a new IT-related solution for deployment mid-2012. About three months ago I told the sales person we’re about 12 months out from making a decision. I haven’t heard from him since. As a result, both the sales person and their company is losing my mind share. I’ve since looked at other solutions.
If lead follow up is poor, it makes me wonder what kind of service I’ll get if I become a customer. So, why does this happen? It’s simple. Sales people are paid to do what?…sell! If they don’t smell a sale, most often they’ll forget about you as they’ve got “more important things to focus on”. Unfortunately, the sales person and the company is losing out on a great opportunity to stay in touch with me. It doesn’t mean they’ve got to call me every week or email me every day bugging me to make a decision. They could focus on educating me; sharing use cases similar to mine, providing me with getting started material, sending me references and more. If their communication was brief, friendly and helpful I’d welcome their messages and most likely keep them top-of-mind. I’d probably also convince myself I don’t need to look elsewhere and this company has what I need, from great service to a great product. The bottom line is that lead nurturing helps businesses stay in touch with their prospects by “recycling” leads into nurture marketing campaigns until they’re ready to buy.
Furthermore, nurturing allows clients to receive personalized communications. In the example above, I’d probably think the sales guy is doing his best to keep me updated since the communications looks like it’s coming from him…and if I replied to the email he’d get my response. To sum it up, lead nurturing is a simple way to satisfy “The Golden Rule of Networking” – as Ivan Misner puts it.
To better understand how Lead Liaison’s revenue generation software can help you stay in touch with your prospects and customers contact us today.
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