Many businesses have their busiest time in the November / December period.
Often this is the make or break time of year when earnings have finally passed overheads and taxes, and they are relieved to at last be making money for their own pocket.
Yet perhaps because it is so busy, this is exactly the time most businesses will stumble and drop the ball.
They will get so caught up in servicing customers that they will forget to think about their marketing - and in particular how they will go about following-up.
It happens in one of two ways…
1. You focus on the immediate customers, and forget about building relationships with the past ones who have done business with you throughout the year.
Or even worse…
2. You let all these new customers buy, and then leave - without collecting their contact details and permission to follow-up with them in future!
I was reminded of this just this week when doing a consulting session for a clever businessman about Christmas sales.
I knew he was doing alot of things right because most of the people in his industry have been driven out of business by changes in technology over the past 20 years. Yet he had kept upgrading his marketing and he was kicking along nicely.
He was certainly clever enough to be collecting contact details for his customers.
Much more impressively he had been using those details year-in year-out to recontact people. He was producing excellent repeat holiday business just like clockwork.
But when I asked him how regularly he was contacting these people DURING the year to offer them the rest of his product range, he paused.
“Never”, he said. “I hadn’t considered it.”
Hmmm.
As I say at the top of this blog, there are 3 keys to word of mouth.
By far the easiest to implement is ‘Follow-Up’. Personal, frequent, long-term follow-up.
The easiest sale you will ever make is a repeat sale.
The second easiest sale is a referral.
Both of these are far more likely when you follow-up.
If your follow-up is not bringing you all the results you want (or if it’s just been all too hard) then help is at hand.
Next week I’ll be doing a special-offer webinar specifically on follow-up and Word of Mouth - and demonstrating what I regard as the Ultimate Service to put your follow-up on autopilot. You will also discover…
- A three step seasonal message that eases people into the next level of the buying relationship with you.
- Follow-up that is personal, powerful AND, best of all, automatic.
- How to make your follow-up marketing a profit-centre, not an expense.
Never risk the follow-up mistake again. Click on this link to sign-up and I’ll see you on the webinar Wednesday November 12.
-Martin Russell
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2 Comments
May l add it is ideal opportunity this time of year for a small business owner,to even lower prices of there products or service, yes its not the general method used around Christmas season time but l believe its a great opportunity to go against big business who up there price this time of year. Great post Martin
Hmm Brian. You might have specific examples that prove me wrong, but in general, even if you’re competing against big business, I don’t agree with discounting.
Let me quote one of my favorite authors on this, Brad Sugars…
“Discounting takes a toll on profits — At just a 10 percent discount, a typical firm would need to sell 50 percent more units to keep the same profit on the bottom-line. Instead of cutting cash out of the deal, ask yourself if there is there a way you can add value to your product or service. This “value added” proposition means you can “give away” something that won’t come out your profits. Done right, it can also add to the experience your customer has of both the transaction and your company. A great experience is key to getting that customer back–which in turn is key to a highly profitable company over time.”
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