Many companies come up with a brand promise, something that represents what the company stands for and makes it unique from its rivals. It’s a promise to the customer about how the company will act. In a recent Gallup poll they found, “Only half of the almost 18 million customers surveyed strongly believe that the companies they do business with always deliver on what they promise.”

One overused and abused promise is the idea companies often throw out about customer satisfaction. The problem is that customer satisfaction cannot exist without any customers. Brands that truly deliver customer satisfaction do not talk about customer service; they focus on customer acquisition.

We don’t even talk about customer satisfaction in my office. We do talk a lot about how to get more customers because attracting customers to our program is the only way to increase customer satisfaction. Increasing customer satisfaction is impossible without increasing customers. I am most worried about noncustomer satisfaction; that is, the people who are dissatisfied because they do not have my product and may not even know that they are unhappy.

Everyone knows that customers have to be satisfied and happy in order for them to return and give positive word of mouth. Make your primary focus commanding attention and generating customers before you worry about making them happy. A customer getting the package a day late is an issue and should be handled, but the client who never buys your product suggests that you have a real serious customer satisfaction problem because you never made that person a customer.

The attainment of the customer is paramount to customer satisfaction, and customer satisfaction cannot exist without a customer. To acquire customers who will buy you must follow-up.

How many name brands do you know that actually follow-up? You go into a store and are rarely ever even greeted. If a salesperson does interact with you, do they ever make contact with you again after you leave the store? Nobody calls, nobody texts, nobody emails, nobody follows potential customers home from the store. Follow-up basically doesn’t exist in today’s world. Yet 80% of transactions are made between the 5th and 12th contact with a customer.

How will you get more customers if you don’t follow up?

Everyone ends up doing something; it is just a matter of when and with whom. The fact that you failed to close an opportunity and then dropped or forgot about that lead does not mean that person is no longer potentially in the market for your services. Just because you quit following up or the client bought from someone else doesn’t exclude that person as being a prospect for you now.

Maybe he or she couldn’t afford your product at the time, wasn’t quite ready, or delayed a decision with the intent to reconsider. Maybe the client couldn’t get funding at the time, maybe you had the person on the wrong product, or maybe he or she bought from someone else and isn’t happy with that decision.

Only 10% of salespeople call beyond three times. Chances are that you haven’t followed up on leads diligently enough, consistently enough, or long enough. The new business you need is sitting safely away in your files. Since you’ve already invested the time and energy, just keep following up and chipping away until you mine the gold.

I have clients that I have called every day for 20 days consecutively before they finally took my call. Regardless of why they are not calling me back, when it comes time to doing something with my product, I will be the one they think of first. Remember: Every contact is more valuable than just the one sale. This person will buy again and likely knows others who will buy.

Follow up, follow up, follow up. Persistence always pays off. It is the greatest sales secret of all time. However, you must be creative in continuing to follow up. This is what I will talk more about tomorrow during live online seminar where I’ll be there taking your questions.

 

Reserve your spot now, space is limited: 8 AM EST, 1 PM EST, or 6 PM EST.

Follow-up is an investment. Many companies brand promises fail because they don’t make this investment. Get serious about real customer satisfaction and start following up!

Be great,
GC

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