One sales technique that every business must implement that will increase their business is to follow-up prospects and customers. If you want to increase the number of customers you have, you absolutely must have a follow-up program in place.

Why is follow-up so important? It builds trust. Unless you build trust with prospects, you will never get them to order. The number one mistake that both on and offline businesses make is they forget that people buy from companies that they trust.

How do you build trust by using a follow-up system? Simple … you tell the truth! The best way to build trust with prospects is to “prove” what you say. Building trust online is harder than offline since offline you have physical contact with your customer. The most effective strategy you can use to build trust, is to use testimonials. This allows existing customers who have had experience with your company back up what you say.

Online, it usually takes at least eight follow-up messages with a new prospect before they will purchase and become a customer. How many contacts do you think the average website makes with its visitors? One! That’s right. The average online business is missing the mark by seven follow-up contacts. The offline follow-up record is no better.

Never assume someone will buy from you on their first visit. Statistics tell us sales are made after the initial contact over 95% of the time for online sales and 50% for offline. It is unbelievable how many sales you are losing without a follow-up system.

If you want to increase the number of suspects that convert into prospects and prospects to customers, you must contact them consistently and frequently. Through a planned series of messages, you simply convey all the reasons why they must buy from you.

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 7th, 2007 at 11:42 pm and is filed under Follow-up, Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.