Here's a surprising business stat I heard from the brilliant Dean Jackson: 80% of customers make their first purchase from you 90 days after their first contact with your company. That's too bad, because over 90% of marketers have stopped marketing to those customers by that time.
Read that again, carefully. You're probably wasting 80% of your client value. Put another way: you're only getting 20% of the money most people would give you if you bothered to ask for it.
Almost every business owner I encounter has little or no follow-up system. They make the initial contact with a customer, in most cases fail to close a deal, and then those customers vanish… never to return.
Even if a person buys from you, chances are your follow-up is minimal, if you even have a follow-up system at all.
Think about this for a moment. What if you got an 80% increase in the average dollars spent by every customer? That would, for most, change the course of their business. Heck, for most, it would amend the course of their life.
So how do you fix this problem? No worries. You can start to turn this around quickly and inexpensively, in just 3 simple steps.
3 Ways To Plug The “Customer Value Leak”
- Start a non-buyers autoresponder list. Use a service like InfusionSoft, Aweber, or ConvertKit to set up an automated email campaign that follows up with non-buyers. You want to follow up with them for at least 90 days (you can always add emails to the end of the sequence later on). Send an email once a week or so, offering helpful advice, information, and tutorials that create real value for the reader. In every email, link back to the product or service you're selling.
- Start a buyers autoresponder list. You need a second follow-up sequence – this time for those who buy your product. These emails will serve two purposes: first, they help motivate customers to download and use the product they purchased. Proactive follow-up reduces potential refunds. Perhaps even more importantly, though, proactive follow-up allows you to cycle through all of your offers for each buyer. Systematically, and without fail.
- Call your customers. Right after they buy, call them on the phone. All you do is say “thanks” and “do you have any questions”. Then, right around 25 days after their purchase, call again. These phone calls demonstrate your compassion and caring in a way almost all your “competitors” will never duplicate. Plus, you'll generate sales you would have missed otherwise.
You can (and should) become more intentional about serving your customers to the maximum extent of your abilities (and that means you must be delivering value to them at your maximum capacity as well.)
What do/can/will you do the plug the ‘customer value leaks' in your business?