The importance of following up on customer enquiries
When it comes to growing a business, often, a lot of attention is given to increasing leads and enquiries.
But, so many sales are missed, so much potential lies unexploited and so many bank balances are diminished, by how the leads and enquiries businesses are already getting, are being handled.
And this has very real consequences.
Sometimes, genuinely life changing consequences as I'm about to show you...
One of our colleagues was planning for a birthday party.
Amongst other things, they fancied a really special cake. And so they made an appointment on a Saturday afternoon and headed down to London to the then world-famous Choccywoccydoodah shop.
They’d booked a one hour consultation - and took a couple of friends along with them.
They tasted 15 different flavours of cake, were given a thorough presentation of all the options and choices for what were genuine works of art.
Now, for the uninitiated, these cakes do not come cheap.
You can't get much for under £1,000. And the size of cake needed for the party would have required a budget nearer to £2,000.
As firm advocates of effective pricing in business, if the experience is spot on then why should we not pay for it – and their experience for them on that Saturday was spot on. They left moderately excited about the cake that they were planning to order.
However, there were two or three specific questions that the lady who saw them was going to talk about with their Master Baker, and get back to them the following week.
You know what's coming...
Five weeks later...
Not a dicky bird.
No email. No call. Nothing.
They were all set to place the order on the day, but these points needed clarifying and they were going to come back to them.
The cake wasn’t needed for several months so there was no capacity or operational issues - it was just a complete breakdown in their marketing system.
There's no excuse for it.
And it would be truly appalling if it weren't for the fact that, as you know, only too well, this lack of follow-up is all too common.
And the real truth is it's happening in your business, as well.
Of course, we'd all like to believe that we'd never miss an opportunity like this.
We will roll our eyes and tut at the folly and foolishness of other business owners who make such school boy errors.
But I promise you, it happens everywhere. Including in your business.
And the crime of not following up becomes even greater when the business owner has shelled out their hard earned money to generate the lead in the first place.
Whether it's through Google, Facebook, in response to a leaflet or an ad, money has been invested to generate that lead and it's just been thrown away by ineffective staff and inefficient processes.
Here's a thought for you:
All you have to do to generate a 20% uplift in your sales (and therefore a much bigger % increase in your profits) this year is follow-up, effectively, on every single lead that comes in.
That's all.
And it's easy to do.
Truth is, 99.9% of people that have read this article up to this point will do absolutely nothing about it - even though they know, right this minute, that this cancer has struck in their business.
Fast forward 18 months and the specialist chocolatier, Choccywoccydoodah ceased trading.
It was put into administration due to, "financial difficulties as a result of a challenging trading environment."
You and I both know that’s not the real reason...
At least one of the major issues is they couldn’t be bothered to follow up properly with hot-to-trot customers.
They went under before the pandemic struck, so it's not COVID related.
Let's not beat around the bush here, the truth is that this business, which had fans literally all over the world, ceased to trade because they were awful at following up.
Our follow-up (or lack of it) has real consequences.
It may not be the difference between survival and failure for every business. But it is almost certainly what's depriving your bank account of an extra £10,000, £20,000, £50,000 hey, in some cases, £100,000 this year.
That's real meaningful money.
Life changing money.
All because you're messing up the follow-up.
If you’d like some help on how you’re follow-up can be improved then just give us a call on 01323 406060.
