Have You Ever Lost A Web Business Prospect Over Bad Follow Up?


by Dan C Johnson - Date: 2010-08-26 - Word Count: 805 Share This!

Most web businesses are bombarded with product inquiries from inquiring customers. Now days most inquiries come by e mail so you try to respond to those request as soon as possible. The more on top of things that you are and the more quickly that you can respond with your product information, the more likely it is that you will make a sale. The real dilemma comes after the first part of information has been sent. Now what do you do to maintain contact with that customer? This is where most internet marketers seem to drop the ball. Without proper follow up you could let a possible buyer slip right through your fingers. You can never count on a potential customer ever calling you back. You need to be the aggressive party in this arrangement and continue to stay in touch.

Sometimes customers wait to see what kind of follow up you actually have in place. Rest assured if a customer doesn't hear back from you, he could wind up going somewhere else. Do you feel that you've ever let a prospect slip through your fingers? A good follow up system is almost an art form.
If you really want to keep up with your customers, you should use an organized follow up system like an autoresponder. A good autoresponder will allow you to load a series of follow up messages that can be sent out at planned intervals to your prospect. A good follow up system will get results. There used to be a follow up system called "The List Technique" which consisted of a huge list of prospects and e mail addresses. After receiving the companies response with the information the prospect requested, the only thing they were sent after that was news about the company themselves.

Follow up consisted of news letters sent out occasionally. This system might get you a few orders but it's a total inefficient way to stay up with a prospect. The "List Technique" was never effective. The downside was the technique wasn't consistent. Most messages that did get sent out only consisted of big company news articles. That's great for the company, but the customer may want more information about the product. If someone is wanting more information about your product, why would he care whether or not your company has moved to a bigger facility or not.

List Technique follow ups are usually news bulletins sent out to everyone who actually inquired about your product. Autoresponder follow up is the only way to keep up a good system. Following up with pre-written messages sent out at set intervals is the only way to increase sales. Using this system can literally double your sales. Of course there is some planning that needs to be done. Either you have to write you own follow up messages or hire a good writer to do that for you.

Your first letter could be your original informative letter. Using the second letter actually begins the process of the follow up. This second letter and beyond need to be filled with more information about your product. Here you can expound on more benefits about your company, the product and even your service and warranty. Follow up messages need to be short and to the point. One follow up letter could be a list of uses and benefits of your product along with some testimonials to if you have those.

Always write your messages with bullets so that a prospect can skim if he needs to. Creating a degree of urgency is always a must, otherwise a customer will take forever to make a decision. You could include a special offer with an expiration date. If you're follow up was done properly, your customer should be about ready to order. As a last result, you can always ask your prospect why he hasn't bought yet. Sometimes it's hard to get a prospect to respond. You could ask about the color of the product, the features and even the price. If after this, you still don't get a response, then it's more than likely that this prospect will never buy.

The timing of your follow up letters is also important in order to be effective. The first letter should go out immediately and follow that up with the second letter 24 hours later. You definitely want to reach your prospect while he's still thinking about your product. You could also give a comparison of your product verse's your competitors Your last follow up letters should be sent out about 4 days apart so that you don't annoy your customer and then he will definitely not buy from you. Following up with a potential customer doesn't have to be complicated but you don't want to lose a good prospect because of a poor follow up system.

Related Tags: marketing, internet, business, product, bad, email, list, autoresponders, customers, system, prospect, e-mail, web business, autoresponder, follow up, lost, follow, steroids, product information, customers prospecting, web businesses, have you ever

Your Article Search Directory : Find in Articles

© The article above is copyrighted by it's author. You're allowed to distribute this work according to the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs license.
 

Recent articles in this category:



Most viewed articles in this category: