Maximizing your business right now
If you’re interested in maximizing your referral business and converting as many leads as possible into clients, you need to have the right follow-up systems in place.
With leads, you need to make sure you’re responding to each and every one of them and responding fast. You also need to stay in contact with them long-term, so when they are ready to use your services, you’re the one they’ll choose.
With clients, on-going relationship building is key. Most of your clients are probably very happy with the service you’ve provided. This means that they’ll have no problem recommending you and using your services in the future. BUT, and this is a big but, this is contingent on you keeping in touch with these clients, providing value to them over time, and making sure they never forget you.
3 tricks to following up
Here are three tricks to follow-up with clients and prospects better:
Schedule Periodic Calls
Use your CRM to schedule periodic keep in touch calls to see how things are going, to check if your client or prospect has any questions for you, etc. Record what you spoke about so on the next call, you can begin the conversation by bringing that up.
Quick tip: if you ask people about how their day was, you’ll find that they’ll likely open up to you about their life. Use this information to have something to talk about on future calls (for example, you may have discovered that they’re a big golf fan or have two golden retrievers).
Capture Website Leads
A good CRM will let you put a “Contact Me” form on your website that will flow all leads that fill out the form directly into your database. You’ll then be notified as soon as a new lead comes through and can respond right away and qualify them. Once you get off the phone with the lead, you can assign them to an Activity Plan or a nurture email campaign.
Automate with Activity Plans
Activity plans, also known as marketing campaigns or nurture campaigns, are a series of emails, letters, and/ or phone calls, designed to either convert a lead into a client or keep in touch and stay “top of mind” with past clients.
A top-notch CRM system will have a number of campaigns created for you. The content in each campaign will vary depending on the type of lead or client. You can choose to send out a letter campaign or choose an email campaign and get the CRM to automatically send out emails at various points in time.
The takeaway
I hope that these tips will help you not only be more responsive to leads but also build deep, lifelong relationships with past clients. As any trainer will tell you, a key ingredient to referrals and repeat business is building long-term relationships with your sphere and providing value over time. Good luck!
