BUSINESS ADVICE | Paul Da Silva
LEAD MANAGEMENT: The art of the follow-up
Whatever stage of the buying process the customer is at, you risk losing that business if you don’t stay in touch with them. Business consultant
Paul Da Silva has some useful tips
he most important thing you need to do when a customer is leaving your showroom, is agree when you are going to speak to them next.
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Whether they have just come in for their first initial browse, or you have presented the kitchen and prices and they have gone away to think about it, the question remains the same.
How long should I leave it until I ring them? If I leave it too long, they might think I’m not interested. If I call too soon, they might think I’m harassing them. Communication is the key here. It’s no good just saying, ‘I will give you a call in a few days’, because that might mean three days to one customer and six days to another.
Whenever I was dealing with any customer, whether it be an initial lead in the showroom, or a customer needing a few days to go through the presentation I’d just done, or more importantly, a customer complaint, I would always agree a definite date and time when I’d contact them next. This achieved a number of things for me. Firstly, for those involved in the sales process, it gives you an idea of where they are in the decision-making journey. Even if they respond with ‘actually, we probably won’t be ready at that stage, could you leave it until Friday?’ that is great. It means you know they are at least still thinking about it and if they are only waiting until Friday, they are nearly at the decision stage. Also, you know that when you ring, you can open with, ‘Hi, it’s Paul, you asked me to give you a call today.’ This is a great opening line. You’re not ringing to chase them, they asked you to call.
There is a very fine balance between annoying the customer, but still keeping control of the situation. But by far the worst thing you could ever do is not ring when you said you would. This could be at the lead-taking stage, during the sale, or after the sale. I spent many of my years turning around failing store branches, showrooms and businesses. And one of the first things I did when faced with a new situation, was ring as many of the customers as I physically could. In the SOLD, LOST, CURRENT and LEADS files – all of them.
The ‘lost’ file was normally the most informative. Whenever I have called customers who had decided to shop with a competitor, the reasons were the same. Only around 10% of customers went with a competitor because they preferred their products. The majority, around 70%, chose a competitor because of the way they were dealt with by the salesperson. And these numbers haven’t changed
over the
years.The remaining 20% were a mixture of people failing to get the finance, deciding to make another purchase, such as a car or holiday, or an emergancy like ill health.
Now sometimes there may be a personality clash. I have dealt with customers in my selling days where I could just tell it wasn’t going well and the chemistry wasn’t right.
But a lot of the time, the feedback from customers was about communication, more accurately, the lack of it:
• I dropped my plans in and never heard anything back;
• The designer said they would call me with a price but they never did;
Around 70% of ‘lost’ customers I called said they chose a competitor because of the way they were dealt with by the salesperson
• The salesperson said I would be contacted to arrange a presentation within a week, but it’s been three weeks and I haven’t heard anything. Generally, customers understand there can be issues sometimes, or you can be busy, but they need to be kept in the loop. An old mentor of mine once said: “People can handle bad news, but late bad news is where the problem starts.” So at whichever stage you are at with your customer, my advice is – communicate, communicate, communicate. Make sure the next contact with every customer is in the diary and everyone is aware of it. CRM software solutions, such as Anthill, are perfect for this. Not only is every contact in the diary, but you will also get a reminder on the morning of the call, and you will be able to refer back to previous conversations that you’ve had with the customer. And it’s no good saying something like, ‘sorry, I didn’t call you last week, I was off work with Covid’. That may seem like a totally reasonable excuse, but all the customer is thinking is, ‘why couldn’t anybody else have rung ?’
They might even think, ‘if I purchase my kitchen and they’re off sick again, what will happen?’ At least one other person in the business needs to know what is happening with every customer – what stage they are at, and when the next contact is due. The customer is expecting first-class service from you and good communication is the common thread that runs through every stage of that.
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· October 2022
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