Maintain contact with your customers in a friendly way


Following up on customers following a sale is something few companies practice in any serious way, and when they do it's usually through a half-hearted "courtesy call" a couple of days following the purchase, in the course of which the caller makes a clumsy attempt to sell the customer something else.

Car dealers hardly ever call their customers (say) two years following the sale using the concept of seeing if the customer is ready for a trade-in: yet this seems like an obvious thing to do, since the dealer already knows the customer's car, and will have a fair idea of its worth.

This is, needless to say, one of the fundamental tenets of relationship marketing - but couple of businesses do it.

Giving people time to recover from the experience of making a major buy is also important - following up too quickly can seem over-eager. The typical reaction from a customer might be "I just spent a lot with you, what more do you would like?"

The Futon Shop follow up on sales approximately one year later, offering add-on products such as drawers to fit under the futon, covers, cleaning, and so forth. Following a year the customer has turn out to be used towards the futon being around, and is ready for extras in a way that he or she was not at the time of buy.

The clients have also had the chance to recover from the initial investment. In common, customers welcome the approach, simply because they are ready to invest again and find the approach reassuring rather than threatening.

You need to keep extremely great records, and diarize things well. You need something of real value to offer the customers. Calculating the suitable time gap is really a matter of considering the value of the initial buy, and also the kind of add-on you're offering.

Try to steer clear of calling it a "courtesy call" - individuals are wise to it, and it is poor to start off by lying to your clients.

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Note: This article was sent to us by: Craig Morris at 01202011

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