If I asked you what the hardest thing in business was, you would probably say delivering a great website; or delivering great legal representation; or delivering the most exquisite jewelry design; or whatever service that you provide.
And yes, delivering outstanding service is really critical, but there is one thing more important and more difficult, and that’s acquiring that next customer, because without that next customer, you won’t be in business to deliver the outstanding service you provide.
And yet, a lot of us drop the ball with regard to follow up…even me.
So pay attention to my mistakes and I’ll teach you how to make more money with proper follow up.
This past week, I didn’t really realize just how critical proper follow up was until I was in desperate need of someone else’s services and reached out to 4 possible providers.
In each case, the response was slow in coming … and as a highly motivated buyer, I was thoroughly annoyed.
And that’s when it hit me that my own follow up was lacking in some areas, and that the frustration that I was feeling was the same feeling that I was probably giving to some of my prospects.
Now most of my inbound referrals and contacts happen by email or my website contact form, so I’m normally able to respond within an hour if not immediately, so those prospects were happy.
Where I dropped the ball a little was on my inbound phone calls that had to leave a message with my service.
My normal process for following up with those inbound calls is to email them, and try to schedule a call, and that works most of the time, but I still had a few people that were not responding to scheduling email.
But my recent frustrating experience where I was the prospect, help me see a gap in my follow up.
The people that were placing phone calls were essentially specifying their preferred mode of communication, and because I didn’t give 100% effort in trying to get back in touch with them, I now know that I didn’t gives these people the best impression of me or my company; and I probably left some money on the table.
So put yourself in the shoes of your prospect and look at your level of responsiveness, and then make improvements to your follow up process, and I guarantee that you will make more money.
