Let’s look at the follow-up of the prospect that we have met and are seeking to do business with but as yet they are not a customer of ours.
First off you must know about them and their business and their needs. If you didn’t ask them enough questions when you met them, do your research, Google is great for that!
You need to know about them broadly, not just for your products and or services but what do and what sort of additional information or leads could you provide to them to be of service to them.
The more you make it about them and not you the more they will appreciate you. As people appreciate sales people more they tend to want to do business with them more.
I have always looked as an order from my clients as their way of saying “thank you for being a professional salesperson and caring about us.”
I was recently associated with three business opportunities that I referred to a finance company I deal with and the only thing I got out of each of these was for them to know I referred the people to them.
However when I do contact them down the track for my own purpose, it won’t be the first time they have heard of me and it will remind them that I am the guy that has been sending them business opportunities.
I do this for as many of my clients and contacts as possible on a regular basis, and each time I do it I ring the people to say I have referred the person to them and explain why I did it.
I am always looking to see if there are seminars or events that may be of interest to my current and potential clients and forwarding through information to them, along with my reason for doing so.
“Hi Kate, I saw this {event/article/information}, thought it may be of interest to you or your clients because…”
Emails, Facebook and LinkedIn make it easy to just drop a note out every now and then to tell people what’s on your mind or you’re up to, costs very little and gets to the right people.
This is not a daily bombardment strategy it is a regular touch base and just let them know you are around approach.
If you met them at a function that had a topical speaker, then a quick follow up with some additional information from the speaker or similar is a nice way of letting people know you care.
Notice how none of this is about your product or your service, it is about them and it is about them buying you as a valuable associate to their business.
There is an old saying in sales “before they buy your product they must buy you”.
Once people have accepted and bought the person that is selling the product or service, they have gotten to a stage of trust and acceptance of them, therefore buying the person’s product or service is a lot easier as the relationship has already been built.
If you are going to call them, make sure there is a real good reason to do so and again the more it is about them and the less it is about you the more they are going to want to take your calls ongoing.
Next month we will look at follow up of clients that we have quoted or we are seeking to get the order from.
George Mavros is a Parramatta based sales educator. Visit www.leapoffaithtraining.com.au.
