When I ask what service business owners are doing to generate revenue, their first answer is lead generation (which fills the pipeline with people who may turn into customers).
And one of the biggest topics that people contact CEO Warrior about is: “How do I generate more leads?”
Lead gen. It’s a huge topic. And there are so many strategies, methods, and even secret tricks that we teach our Warrior clients to help them get a FLOOD of new leads coming in.
But if you want more money, and if you want to keep your team busy with revenue-generating strategies, then you need to be doing something else too:
Follow-up.
It’s funny, people get so focused on new leads coming in that they forget about the leads and prospects and customers they already have. Your existing pipeline of leads, prospects, and customers are potential revenue just waiting to be tapped… all you have to do is reach out to them. Your business is wasting a lot of money if you’re not following up with people who respond to your advertising, but don’t take the step of buying your product or service.
Think about this. If someone responded to your advertising by calling you, if they cut out and sent in a coupon, if they asked for a brochure, or if they came into your store, there WAS some level of interest there. Problem is, most business owners forget about these people if they didn’t buy the first time around.
The fact that business owners don’t follow-up is like if you buy new clothes instead of doing laundry. Sure it’s nice to have new clothes… but you have perfectly good clothes in your closet; why aren’t you wearing those?
So, keep generating leads… but build a powerful follow-up system to connect with your existing list of leads, prospects, and customers.
This existing list already knows you (the leads know OF you… your customers have actually HIRED you!), so you can follow up and market to them. (Even if they said “no” in the past doesn’t mean they aren’t interested in future work.)
There are four key reasons why this happens, and I’d like to share them with you.
Firstly, trust. Maybe earlier the lead didn’t trust you or your team so they didn’t hire you. But if you continue to follow-up with them, they’ll get to know you… and that leads to liking you… and that leads to trusting you. Follow-up with service and value to show that you care and you’ll create the trust that was missing, and turn those leads and prospects into customers.
The second reason why potential buyers get put off from buying is because they feel the price is too high. If your price is too high (or too low!) then people might not buy. Although sometimes it’s not price but how you frame that price in the context of your presentation.
The third reason also relates to price, but in a different way: In this instance, the prospect wants the product or service, but the full price is out of their reach (or they simply don’t have the money to spend right now). To overcome this, split the payments into installments. This is a proven winner. EVERYONE can manage small, bite-size payments, so make sure to create a payment plan if you sell high-priced items. Infomercials use them for a reason!
A big fourth reason why people didn’t buy from you the first time is because they just didn’t need the service as urgently as they thought they did. Nothing wrong with that. Maybe their priorities change.
When you follow-up with people, you can reconnect with them at different times and you may find that their level of trust or their financial situation or their level of urgency has changed.
There’s a saying that marketers say, “There’s money in the list.” This means that you shouldn’t just focus on lead generation. It’s important but it’s only part of the story. Develop mastering in follow-up and you’ll make more money with less effort.
