INteract: Customer Bonding Lead Response
Now that you have a pile of leads, what do you do with them?
A major challenge in sales and networking is striking a balance between being involved in the process and taking the time to follow up on leads. Once you gather leads, you need a system that helps you respond to them regularly. This article outlines the steps to develop a comprehensive system by designing a relationship-building framework, a database system, and creative communication tools to educate and entice prospects to your products and services.
Build A Customer Relationship Process
Too often, companies attempt to mass-communicate without recognizing that different customers have varying needs at different times. By segmenting your target customer needs into groups and evaluating your best and most successful customer relationship systems for each segment, you can create an ideal customer relationship process that optimizes your core strengths at the right times for each customer segment.
By using this segmentation approach, you can then categorize your leads by segment and respond in an effective manner that you know works for similar customer needs. This approach can mean the difference between forgetting or mistargeting leads and creating hot prospects.
For example, this featured Insight INteract Bonding Process map is a customer relationship process defined for a professional service organization. Each stage of the relationship is named, defined, and scheduled, along with a specific timeframe for execution. This organization can assign the proven, monthly communication tools to match the objectives for each stage. Thus, the most effective communications can be predicted and automatically executed by a specific routine within the organization.
To properly segment your customer groups, it is essential to understand their specific needs. Many companies segment their customers based on type or size of business. This is not correct. It is customer needs that drive strategy. For example, a financial service company may create the following segments based on the following customer needs:
PENNY-WATCHERS: need daily financial tools to help make ends meet.
LEGACY-SEEKERS: need long-term financial education and solutions for retirement options.
RAINY DAY-SAVERS: need ways to optimize steady growth and limited access to saved money.
After segmenting primary needs, the next step is to identify the customers who fall into these categories and determine which products and services best meet their needs. If you make the mistake of segmenting by “who” first, then you will make false assumptions about what a demographic group needs. There can be various lifestyle differences among a single demographic group.
Responsive Database Integration
With the help of a database management system, prospects can be assigned predefined communications that best convey what the organization can do to address the specific needs of a particular customer segment.
By tracking the following customer information, along with routinely activated regular communications, you can easily stay in touch with prospects as frequently as you wish. Systems such as Batchbook, Pipeline, Salesforce, and Sugar can help you manage tasks in a user-friendly web-based system:
Track all of the customer information listed below.
Schedule and log regular communications (singular and bulk).
Schedule follow-up assignments within your organization.
Such systems can even integrate with your website registration lists and email marketing systems, making other networking follow-ups a more realistic challenge to meet.
Gather the following customer information:
Name
Company name
Address
Email address
Telephone number
Fax number
Cell phone number
Website address
Specialty area
Type of organization
Number of employees
Assign a segment name
Level of interest
Services of interest
Mutual friends or contacts
The source from which you received the contact
Background and personal information: education, resume
Dates and notes from the last conversation with a contact
Next steps
Future plans
Communication routines you can implement through your customer relationship system can include the following activities:
Creative direct mail postcards
Email campaigns
Personalized letters
Brochures for specific services
Articles
Newsletters
Contests
Coupons
Presentation/seminar invitations
Small gifts
Referral programs
The tool you send may depend on the level of interest a prospect has in your services. For example, you can rate each prospect on an ongoing basis with one of the following three levels of interest:
Level 1: Hot Prospects
These prospects need your services, have actively inquired to learn more, or have responded well to your prior communication efforts. Most of the sales process is complete; now you must build confidence into their decisions. Communication tactics: a small, fun gift showing your commitment to serving them, regular direct mail postcards featuring why they should do business with you, and a personalized letter with testimonials from other clients.
Level 2: Warm Prospect
These prospects tell you to stay in touch, but they aren’t interested now. You may see that they are not quite ready for your services, but would like to spend more time with them in the future. Communication tactics: a monthly newsletter, email campaign, occasional personal note with a relevant article, coupon for purchase, or invitation to a seminar.
Level 3: Cool Prospect
These prospects are on your radar screen, but you do not want to meet with them at this time. Communication tactics include contests, brochures for specific services, a monthly newsletter, an email campaign, and invitations to seminars.
Be Creative
Research shows that it takes six “no” responses to get a “yes” from a prospect. Therefore, you need to be as effective and savvy as possible to avoid wasting a communication opportunity or creating a wrong impression. When prospects do not respond, be patient and persistent—timing of circumstances can dramatically change interest levels in a short period of time.
No one wants to do business with a boring business. If you use template communication tools, ensure they do not sound like boilerplate. Certainly, avoid using industry language and lingo that does not serve a purpose or differentiate you from others.
The decision to work with someone is based on chemistry and trust. Using your genuine, unique personality in communications will allow prospects to see who you are. Presenting yourself in an open, friendly, delightful fashion gains credibility. Your communication should not be one they regret. It must be a pleasure hearing from you, in person or via any marketing communication tool you present. Your personality is one thing no one else can duplicate, so use it to open doors.
Be creative and use the themes and intricate details that make your business unique. If you offer services that make people feel cared for, use a caring theme and language that symbolize how you uniquely care for your customers.
Be thoughtful and consider the true needs of your hottest prospects. If you are too busy, find a way to make the time to send something special that top prospects will relate to. Send articles, cartoons, or jokes that you know will more closely connect them to you.
Be sure to follow up within 10 days via a personal call, email, or handwritten note that makes them feel like they are a priority. Set a tone that demonstrates your reliability as a partner to work with. State how and when you will follow up and ensure that you do so. They will silently challenge you and will watch to see if you do what you commit to. Reinforce your commitment and demonstrate your interest in working with them.
Your communications do not have to be fancy, but they have to be tasteful. The cleaner and more direct they are, the more succinct and thoughtful you will appear. Avoid sending busy, confusing, or overwhelming messages that make your services appear too complex. It should be a relief to work with you.
Utilize the creative individuals on your staff or associates to help brainstorm innovative ideas. The people who best know your business and your customers will help you understand what your customers want to hear. Also, use customer surveys to gather information directly from your customers. Please pay close attention to the common language they use to describe your products and services.
Knowledge Directs Creativity
Initially, most of our clients believe that researching their customers’ needs is a waste of time and money. They assume they already know their needs. However, in nearly all cases, they are surprised by at least one major issue in the final report. For those who were not surprised, the confirmation of the information gave them a reason to finally address the needs they had not met.
Valid customer awareness requires that you creatively discover your customers’ desires through a process that surfaces what they would not directly tell you during normal business transactions (i.e., customer interviews, focus groups, or surveys). You can do this yourself or hire someone to gather information objectively on your behalf. Regardless, you want to understand the true meaning behind your customers’ needs to direct your strategic prospecting more effectively. This form of information becomes a key ingredient for selling 'to their needs' and not ’to your assumptions’. Your recipe for effective, targeted follow-up communications requires creatively messaged ingredients that speak to their truth. If you assume that you already know your customers’ needs, chances are you assume too much.
Be Strategic
Develop your customer relationship process to optimize your return on relationships. The integration of your relationship-building process and each communication should be guided by strategies designed to meet the needs of your target customer segment. Your efficiency and accuracy in achieving this integration will determine the uniqueness of your competitive advantage. Ensure the design of your communication tools directly relates to your strategy and hits at your prospects’ interests at heart.
As you can see, follow-up is not a short-term strategy. It is a long-term strategy both in prospecting and customer relationship-building efforts. For many years, you will likely prospect the same companies or attempt to retain the same customers. Therefore, your strategy must consider longer-haul building blocks to maintain interest and establish credibility without annoying or pestering a potential customer.
Your daily strategy for follow-up is best served by setting a daily routine for calls, emails, database updates, and letter writing. Networking follow-up is a discipline that gets easier with time. The ease builds as you establish a system that works both personally and professionally, setting the right tone for your business. The respect that you show for the process is the respect that will evolve in your reputation and the essence of who you are.
Networking Follow-Up Checklist
Segment your existing customers into target segments (typically no more than four) that will drive business growth.
Base the segments on customer needs—not industries or types of businesses. Their needs are what determine your strategies.
Create a communication strategy for each segment that sends the right message about the benefits of your products and services.
Specify and detail the relationship-building process that you have proven works for each segment.
Implement an integrated database to store prospect and customer information, as well as track communications and follow-up activities.
Organize your prospect lists by segment and by the level of interest you have in helping them.
Develop creative communication tools that support your brand, strengths, strategy, and objectives of your relationship-building stages.
Be disciplined in making follow-up a regular part of your daily schedule. Show the respect and attention that your prospects deserve.
Allow a natural chemistry to unfold when you respond to prospects. Create trust so they are glad to hear from you; be delightful, not burdensome. Have the right attitude and they will pick up on it.
Experience the pleasure and satisfaction of a follow-up system tailored to the specific needs of your prospects. Develop wise relationship-building processes that create clear direction and ease in your follow-up routine. It will be worth it!
Your relationships will last longer and be more profitable as you learn how to be reliable in developing deep connections that go beyond price points. Don’t let a lack of awareness about your customers’ needs and goals come between you and a great future of long-term, prosperous relationships. Start each relationship on the right foot with an intentional relationship-building system that exemplifies who you are and how you are unique.