Growing your customer base, increasing your orders, and winning business from your competition is only part of the job. Developing a community of customers who continue to spend with you, refer you to others, and build your reputation is the long‐term goal, and taking a long‐term view means following the correct maintenance plan for all you have invested in.
View your customers, ambassadors, and prospects like an ATM that, when cared for correctly, will print you money as and when you need it. Protect your investment by serving your community with the right tools and showing them that you care about them. Focusing solely on new customers leaves you vulnerable and stifles long‐term growth as you start losing customers as quickly as you created them. Returning to the theme of relationships and dating, your customers need continual attention and must feel like you care about them, so stay connected with regular touch points. Group your contacts in order of priority and develop a care plan for each group that is maintainable and consistent with the purpose of keeping your customers engaged.
Large businesses can employ big teams to work on account management and retention of their customer base. The modern world means that communication channels are plentiful, and even with limited resources you can stay visible in the hearts and minds of your customers, providing you use the right tools for the right jobs.
Although not an exhaustive list, this chapter focuses on the account management tools I identify for my clients as being essential in building and managing your community of contacts and continually reminding them to shop with you. Many of these tools are evolving and changing all the time and your options here are abundant. Remember that this is a book on selling skills and not a marketing guide, to explore the full potential of these communication channels then you may wish to explore further resources by other professionals. But please look at the principles behind each channel mentioned and how they can help you to increase your sales success.
Without question, a good database is the hub of all great account management processes. A database should include all relevant contact details for all customers, suppliers, and potential customers. It should show their past value to you financially and also include their expected future value. You should then keep an up‐to‐date biography on each person in your database, allowing others to understand your relationship, and it should store any useful facts. Attached to each record, you should keep a running timeline of contact and correspondence, allowing you to always have great information to recall. In addition, the ability to forward plan and set reminders prevents you from needing a perfect memory.
Years ago, systems that provided this service were a significant investment, and small businesses relied on spreadsheets, diaries, and client files. Technological advances mean that you can access software that provides a framework to do all of this at no further expense to yourself. Simply enter the phrase “business CRM system” into your search engine, and you will be impressed by the incredible choices.
Spending time in person with your most valuable contacts provides an effective way to remind your customers to shop with you. This can be achieved by showing your face in person when you are local. Sometimes unannounced, perhaps arranged at short notice, or even a scheduled meeting—every time you meet with a potential customer, you have the potential to influence a sale. When you meet with an existing client, you will have the opportunity to further cement your relationship and uncover new areas where you can help each other; when you meet with a contact, you have the chance to share their contacts for further business development opportunities. Plan your future meeting points with customers and prospects and decide your minimum expectations for each contact. A giant reason that people leave their suppliers is from not feeling valued. Face to face time is a great way of showing that you care. You can also use your future travel plans as a guide to stay in touch with others and reach out on the occasions you find yourself in their locality.
We have already established that picking up the phone is a catalyst for making stuff happen. Please don't forget your existing customers, and schedule regular calls to discuss their progress and future plans. This is your chance to check their happiness with the work completed to date, as well as gain insight into their plans and what you can do to assist. Regular calls can be both unannounced and scheduled. With your key relationships, committing to a regularly scheduled contact provides a promise that keeps you in the conversation and has them see you as an important part of their team. Think of the times you are travelling and how your time could be easily wasted. Prepare a call list that would allow you to turn low pay off periods of time into high pay off sales activities by reaching out to your customer base and creating further opportunities.
Sending a regular hard‐copy newsletter to your existing customers can be a fantastic way of keeping them engaged with your business and ensuring that you are kept in mind and is likely to have a far greater deliverability rate than its electronic counterpart. The question of how often you write a newsletter will continue to go unanswered. My take is that its frequency should be consistent and you should write as often as you have something worth saying. Being paper based, it should be simple to read and full of images. Consider that it will be read as a break from the daily routine, so it should be light entertainment. Physical mailings are becoming fewer and fewer, so delivering something of value in this form to your customer can be a way to share information and stand out.
The biggest difference between your electronic newsletter and its paper‐based rival is that only the minority of people you send it to will actually open it, let alone read it. Be diligent in your consistency and send it at the same moment for each period so that your contacts expect to receive it. Deliver value to them and provide only information that they may find useful. Inboxes are cluttered with poor‐quality e‐mail communications, so to cut through the noise, you need something that earns its place. Your e‐newsletter is your “catchers mitt” for all of your contacts and is the one piece that can reach everyone you have ever connected with and has given their permission to stay in touch with you.
Treat it with that level of respect and only commit to produce something you can commit to and are proud of.
This is a fantastic tool for positioning yourself as an expert within your industry. Ideally attached to your website, it's where you can regularly post your thoughts, ideas, and opinions on matters that will be of interest to those you communicate with. Having a blog gives you a voice to share great information, can make you more findable by your target market, and is sharable with your existing customers. Linking to your articles within your newsletters drives traffic back to your site.
For content on your blog a great place to start is to consider the most common questions you are asked in your industry and construct well written pieces that deliver answers to these questions. These pieces can then be shared by you and others when this need arises and act as a resource to your efficiency and add credibility to your advice to future and existing customers.
Facebook is currently the largest online community in the world and has the attention of the majority of English‐speaking consumers in most marketplaces.
A page can be a tool for credibility and to communicate with your fans, and a Facebook group is a useful way of staying connected with customers who are part of the same experience. Personal profiles should remain exactly that—personal. Encourage your contacts to connect with your page, post varied content that appeals to them, and build support groups for your core offering to leverage your time.
One of the largest frustrations I face with platforms like Facebook is the ever changing landscape to the strategies that work. Understand that what works today may not work so well tomorrow and that this is always the case. Create a minimum performance standard for posting and engagement, you can then experiment with their paid advertising options and other strategies to grow your reach and be more specific with your targets and messaging. As you experiment then be sure to test what is working and only invest your energy and resources into those that are delivering you results.
Imagine Twitter as the busiest‐ever train station in rush hour. Conversations are happening everywhere, and you are not sure what to say or who to listen to, but no doubt there will be a few interesting conversations going on.
I find Twitter far more useful for listening to others and joining conversations, rather than looking for something profound to say myself. Follow all of your key customers and pay attention to what they are posting. Retweet their posts and join in their discussions if you want them to notice you.
Educating customers on the use of the # symbol when grouping information can allow them to communicate in groups effectively and easily. We will use #exactlyhowtosell to monitor conversations about this book, so please search it on Twitter and see what you find.
Connecting with all your existing customers on LinkedIn can give you huge benefits. First, you can learn so much more about them from their detailed personal profiles, but also you have gained a further way of directly contacting them. LinkedIn e‐mails often generate a higher open rate than standard bulk e‐mails and can get you noticed more effectively. A further benefit is that if your contact ever moves on, you are connecting to them as an individual and not via the business. That way it will be easy to contact them again once they reach their new role.
A further tool within LinkedIn is the ability to create groups. By creating a group for your customers, you again have a further method of communication and can create a community for them around your area of expertise and add huge value as the leader within that space.
Your website is a fantastic tool for managing your existing customers. Every time you bring people to your website, you have the chance to introduce additional products and services to them. If you provide resources to your customers, then make them available from your website and introduce additional offers and products to them on their journey to reach the resource they are looking for. Your social media and e‐mail campaigns can all drive traffic back to your site, and well‐positioned offers will bring results. By adding content for complimentary product and service offering to your site you can direct your existing customers back to the site with your other campaigns and soon introduce them to other ways in which you can help them, hence growing the value of your existing customers.
The big corporations know the value of getting their best customers together for high‐level hospitality scenarios. Getting your customers together and demonstrating how you value them is a proven method of increasing their loyalty. Use new product launches, seasonal events, celebrations, and office moves all as excuses to get your customers together. Add additional levels of success to your events by giving VIP invites to existing customers and inviting them to bring along friends who could soon grow into future customers. Document these events with video and photos, share them in your digital media, and encourage attendees to do the same to maximize your return on investment.
Keeping things simple, let's just focus on the letters you already send your customers—perhaps statements, reminders, or even invoices. Each of these letters provides a sales opportunity, and every form of outbound communication can carry an additional message as well a primary purpose. Consider the extra value you can get from every mailing by adding a small message or including a secondary communication. Every communication provides a commercial sales opportunity, and it is down to you to realize them.
Unlike an e‐newsletter, this piece is designed to trigger a response or action from the reader. E‐mail campaigns continue to be remarkably effective, providing you adhere to some simple rules:
Once you've targeted the right customers, you have a number of barriers to overcome.
Just getting an e‐mail opened can be challenging. It relies on a compelling subject line and a trusted sender address. Just as with newspapers, the better the headline, the better the uptake. Your subject line should be designed with the purpose of getting the e‐mail opened, rather than labeling the content of the e‐mail.
The best emotion to trigger to ensure successful open rates is intrigue or curiosity. If you make the recipient curious as to the content of the e‐mail, they become more invested in opening it. Monitor the subject lines that land in your inbox and draw influence from those that pique your interest.
Once your e‐mail is opened, the reader will make a reflex decision whether to read it. Your opening sentence must capture the reader's interest and encourage them to read more. Subheadlines can help to lead people through the copy and make reading it more simple.
If your offer gets read, it is paramount that the call to action is clear, prominent, and repeated. It should be as simple as possible for your reader to take action and painted out in clear simple steps. Confusion at this stage will result in no action taken and no sale. By repeating your action two or three times throughout your offer, you can significantly increase your click‐through rates. A further area in which you can reiterate your call to action is in a postscript.
Although direct mail is delivering diminishing returns for many industries, I believe that as long as houses are built with mailboxes, a direct mail offer has a place in your communication track. As digital marketing dominates, a direct response mailer can be a refreshing alternative. Execution is the key to success, and personalization, creativity, and authenticity deliver the goods here.
Building on the success of handwritten cards, I often work with clients to produce low‐volume, targeted direct mail campaigns that are highly personal. In a recent test, we measured the inbound inquiry level from a very simple split‐test direct mailing. We produced a printed event invitation to be sent to just 100 of the client's existing customers. Fifty were sent on their own with a generic covering letter and resulted in not one inquiry. For the other 50 we wrote a very short personal message on a Post‐it note and adhered it to each flyer before sending. This resulted in an inquiry rate of eight from 50 invitations.
Consider how you can build low‐volume, highly targeted and personal direct mail campaigns and create huge impact on the right people to drive powerful actions from your existing customers.
Corporate gifts have been around for years, and the gift market is a huge industry. Yet still I see mistake after mistake as, with the best intentions, companies provide gifts that are of little value to their customers and in turn provide little return on investment. Diaries, calendars, mousepads, mobile phone holders, cheap pens, and stress balls are all examples of gifts I have received that have all passed over my desk without a second thought.
Think of the gifts that will increase your value to your customers and be of genuine value to them. Be personal and consider their hobbies, lifestyles, and interests.
Something that has worked fantastically for me is the gifting of great books that I have read. When I have read something that I believe will be of value to someone in my network it is quite frequent that I will purchase a copy for them and send it off with my compliments.
Objective of every gift is to SHOW that you care and be of genuine value to the recipient.
All business leaders and decision makers love recognition. Whether it's a simple thank you or some lavish praise, providing it is delivered with sincerity, it is a great way of adding value for your customers. Saying thank you is a minimum, but there are many ways you can step this up with a little extra attention. Perhaps a client of yours receives an industry award, is recognized in the press, or goes through a significant life event. Use these moments to reach out and acknowledge their achievements. Send cards, press cuttings, and tokens of appreciation as a means of letting them know that you too are celebrating their successes.
Track your clients personal and professional communications and pro‐actively look for opportunities to recognize their successes.
How can you certify your customers for their work with you? Whether it is a product guarantee, a recognition of their loyalty, or attendance at a training session or an event, anything you can do to add their name to a piece of paper containing your logo with the potential of it being framed or displayed reinforces the value your client gets from you.
Placing something of this nature in their possession also provides significant opportunity that this item will be displayed and create a reminder to them of the value you provide and also a potential talking point to bring you into more conversations when you are not even there.
This is the only method of communication that is almost certainly both opened and read. The world can stop for a text message, as people stop midconversation to check their phones. The text message should be used as a timely reminder for simple actions. One of the best uses I see is when fast food delivery retailers send their latest offers by text to previous customers on Friday afternoons. Consider how a text could remind someone of an expiring offer, introduce an event invite, or simply recognize an important event in their world.
In every communication with a customer, it is important that you understand that they really only tune into one frequency. The station they are listening to is called Wii FM, which stands for “What's in it for me?” With every statement you make, you must put yourself in the customer's shoes and ask yourself, “So what?” In doing so, you will ensure that all your communication is benefit led and has the recipient's interests in mind.
When you take a retrospective look at your life and reflect on the recognition, praise, and rewards showered upon you, I am certain you are able to count on one hand the number of occasions you remember vividly and that have really left their mark.
As a final thought, I want you to consider acknowledging those of value to you and your business. In today's fast‐paced society, taking time to recognize effort above and beyond the call of duty will give your business the edge and make you leap out from the crowd. Whether you wish to reward excellence in your team, show gratitude to a valued customer, celebrate success with a partner, or show recognition to a prospect, success in sales is an amplification of the relationships you build. Genuine care will always be in vogue.
Financial reward can be an incentive but is rarely the best option and over time could cost a fortune. You've heard it said that “It's the thought that counts,” and in business this gives you a massive chance to shine. Rain genuine praise on your employees when they achieve, say thank you to your customers at every given opportunity, let your partners know their efforts are appreciated, and do all you can to go the extra mile.
When saying thank you, be sure to use the right tool for the job. With e‐mail overload and the whole world going mobile, a successful way of getting noticed is to go back to basics. Sending a handwritten card or letter in acknowledgment of achievements or just to say thank you will win you respect and appreciation. I believe it is possible to build a business by sending cards to customers and prospects, since there are so many opportunities to say thank you or acknowledge special occasions. The sincerity of the message is all‐important. It should be personal and heartfelt—don't use the occasion to send marketing literature. Take the time to write neatly by hand.
If you want different results and to be seen as different from your competitors, then start behaving differently.