I Thought I Knew This Stuff…

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If you’d asked me before December whether I was good at following up with my customers I would have said, “Yes.” Indeed, if you’d really put me on the spot, I would have said we were at least a  nine out of 10 at this. We were very good. Or so I thought…

A long story short, but the week before the 2014 Mastermind Group, we were all set to kick off with a big weekend summit for all 50+ members and we had one guy drop out. It was for very good  reasons and I completely understood his decision but it did leave me one member short and that’s a reasonable chunk of revenue. Nevertheless, on the Monday afternoon when he told me, I  simply shrugged my shoulders, figured that there was nothing I could do about it and carried on my daily business.

The following morning, I was midway through my 90 minutes when a thought struck me. I stopped the work I was doing and instead drafted a very hastily written email to members explaining  that we’d had this dropout of Mastermind and that there was an opportunity for one person to come into the Group.

Within four hours, we had seven applications.

I was genuinely stunned.

It was only six weeks after we had offered and marketed the 2014 Mastermind programme, so it’s not as if these people hadn’t known about it or hadn’t had the chance to buy recently. And that was the big lesson for me: that people buy when they are ready – not necessarily when you’re doing the selling.

What I think this shows is the importance of keeping in touch with and regularly reminding our customers of what we do and how we can help them. It’s arguably the single most important thing for any marketer. It’s certainly getting a place much higher up the agenda in my 90 minutes going forward.

Every business has leads sat somewhere that, if reignited or communicated with today could generate a conversation that leads to a sale. But across the country, business owners have dismissed  these leads as old, dead or dormant. Worse still, they’ve simply just forgotten about them – like the guy at the NEC who I wrote about in the lead article last month.

At the Convention in September, Sir Chris Hoy called these things ‘marginal gains’. I don’t care what name or badge you put on them but my eyes were opened massively by this incident in my business and I’ve resolved not to let it happen again.

I hope this note does the same for you.

Before you turn the page, just have a think about the short two to threeparagraph email that you could write in 20 minutes and send out today or tomorrow that would bring in some sales that you otherwise wouldn’t get.

That’s the power of follow-up.

What’s stopping you?