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In following on
from our recent articles in response to the question;
"What are new & innovative ways to market your
business if it's an online store only, for the purpose of driving more
traffic and customers that do repeat business with you?"
Here are some
suggestions on providing team members with guidelines on how to better
care for (and retain) their clients, that I recently gave to a client
who is in the computer hardware business. Feel free to tailor this to
suit your own business.
Rather than
introduce "more ideas" or higher level stuff, I feel strongly that your
customers would be best served by you developing a simple, 5 point
"Customer Care Commitment" after-sales process. Perhaps something along
the lines of:
-
"Thank You"
card completed by the sales person immediately the sale is complete
(or at least before they go home that day). The card could be mass
produced, as a fold-over "tent card" DL or smaller, with lines on
the inside face for a hand-written note, and space at the bottom for
overprinting with member's contact details. You could even use the
old Joe Girard* line of "We Like You" across the
front of the card.
The general rule
would be that the sales person must complete the card, with a friendly
note that says something like, "Thanks for the opportunity of providing
you with a new computer earlier this week, etc". They must put it in an
envelope with a stamp immediately (after all, it's then that they
remember their client's name, their dog's name, their kid's school - the
lot), and post it one or two days after the sale.
-
Schedule a
scripted phone call one week after the sale to assess the customer's
level of satisfaction with their purchase (script questions that
lead the customer to reiterate their satisfaction so that they feel
good about their purchase all over again). Probe for areas of
less-than-perfect satisfaction and have scripted processes to
address emerging issues, some of which could reveal an opportunity
to provide paid training to the client in their use of the item, or
opportunities for on-sells. The purpose of the call is to develop
the seller's relationship with their customer, because they are
going back to them with an offer in the near future, and they want
to be selling to their friends when they do. There is no direct
sales pitch at this stage but it's OK to sell them anything that
satisfies an as-yet-unmet need volunteered by the customer.
You could print
up a simple "Call Sheet" onto which seller's record the name, sales
date, item and value, and phone number of their clients for the day.
They would then use this sheet in 7 days time to guide their call.
Well, once again we've run out of space, so stay tuned for the next
instalment.
If you have a question in mind feel free to send it to
info@profitune.com, you will also go into the running to
win 1 of 4 books. |
The world's greatest salesperson
Joe Girard is regarded as the
world's most successful salesperson selling six cars a day to his
prospects (Joe is an individual salesperson, not a dealership!).
How can anyone maintain an average like that?
Simple, he has 25,000 prospects and customers in his database and sends
each of them a single postcard each month with a different photograph of
a pleasant nature scene on each, the words "I Like You" scrawled
(printed) across the front and his signature (printed) on the back.
If his typical prospect spends 4 years "in the bucket" before he or she
buys another car, they have been told 48 times by Joe that "I Like You"
- and people buy off their friends.
Maybe it should be harder than that to find sufficient prospects to whom
to sell six cars every day - but apparently it isn't!
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