Keep front and center in the mind of a potential customer without pushing them away can be a difficult line to walk. Push too hard for a sale and your lead can fuss. But fail to follow, and your head will almost certainly disappear.
With this challenge in mind, I asked successful entrepreneurs Young Entrepreneurs Council (YEC) the question:
What is one way that you keep active customer leads in your funnel, even if they have explicitly said that they are not interested (yet) to make a purchase?
New York, meet the world stage technology
5000 Tech leaders coming to New York this November to learn and do business. This is your chance to join them.
Their suggestions are below.
1. Reach Out
We reach our managers to head and wonder how software consultants or sales do. Simply send, "customer Hey, just wanted to check and see how things are going with X and review X?"
This allows customers to be open on all the differences, so that we can get them to another time or rehire them because they have not got back to their current point.
- Marjorie Adams, AQB
2. Follow-up in a few months
I note in my CRM that remind me to follow up with them four to six months after our conversation to check. This keeps you top of mind for them and enhances your service and follow-up skills. Often he finds a better time to make a purchasing decision.
- Darrah Brustein, subnet 40 / Finance Whiz Kids
3. Celebrate Holiday Fun
People always send holiday cards, and it's a great way to give a personal touch to those who are customers and those who are not.
But as a single company, we want to keep our unique brand, so we like to celebrate holidays such as the Autumn Equinox Day or Presidents. This makes our customers (or non-guests) laugh, and it keeps us at the top of their mind without pushing too hard to make a decision.
- Bryan Silverman, install Media
4. Remarketing Advertisements
Maintaining customer leads through various forms of Remarketing an essential way to keep active leads. Search Remarketing allows you to show ads to customers looking for products similar to yours. Display remarketing keep your brand at the forefront when they visit various online sites.
Rather than relying on the customer to remember you at the right time, you will count on remarketing to the memory for them when they need your services.
- Brett Farmiloe digital Marketing Company
5. Establish excellent relations
For us it is all about relationships. Many times our sales process can be quite long, so we must build strong relationships and respect they might not be in a place to buy on our calendar.
We have relationships with our networks regardless of whether we think they will make a buying decision right away because, at some point, they will run into a situation where they need our services, and when they do, we'll be there.
- Chris Cancialosi, GothamCulture
6. Tag All Active Leads as
We're pretty aggressive in terms of the volume of communication we offer our users. Part of the reason is because we are a network and community.
It is important that users remain engaged with our platform and its users. Everyone is marked as active in our sales funnel regardless of how much communication they have asked for. If they eventually withdraw from our sales funnel, then it is unlikely they were ever going to commit to being a client anyway. This has been our experience over the years.
- Janis Krum, opprtunity
7. Time It Right
These tracks are not more hot leads. They are removed from the funnel. To keep these customers engaged, we drop into a long-term drop, the segmented and automated tracking sequence.
If a customer has assured that he will never buy from you, make sure to keep that person on your list "do not contact". If it means there will be a possible purchase, and then send you a kind of reminder to call again and see if he expresses interest in buying that time. Make sure you time it right if it is a seasonal product.
- Kevin McGann, GraduationSource
8. Educate
Quit trying to sell the customer, and maintain the relationship instead. If you have identified a problem that the customer (even if it is not that your product solves), go out of your way to find a solution. Provide research, information, recommendations and even introductions to competitors they can use to solve their problem.
If you can demonstrate the value out of the sale, your prospects will trust you and turn to you when they have a problem your product can solve directly. Focus on relationships instead of selling.
- Brewster Stanislaw, Inside Social
9. Add Value humanized
We use an expression in our sales process called "humanized value." It is the concept that people do business with people, and you need to provide value. It does not matter if you are a software or tangible products for sale; you need a humanised value.
If someone is not interested in buying from you again, offer a package that includes a number of contact points that provide value in the form of recording calls, case studies, deals / promotions, tips / how-tos, stories of clients and examples of giving back. Leads are people, and they expect you to be too.
- BJ Cook, Digital Operative Inc.
10. Share relevant news
One of the ways we keep customer leads is committed to share relevant information about the things that could help their company or about the target market they are trying to achieve.
Our clients are companies that want to reach the parents of the school, is an example to keep them engaged is sending information about upcoming events on campus that will help the market to visit parents.
- Sarah Schupp, UniversityParent
11. Use content strategy
A great way to keep them engaged potential customers is to execute a content strategy. We do this through our corporate blog. Rather than writing a bunch of blog posts about how awesome the company, we adhere to "how to" articles, case studies and other informational content that applies to our industries potential customers.
Essentially, we want to make our blog a source destination that is full of valuable information to potential customers. This keeps these potential customers engaged, and it allows you to stay in their jurisdiction when they are interested in buying.
- Danny Boice, Speek
12. Ask the right questions
sure to ask all the right leading questions, so when you an offer that meets the customer's requirement, you may be able to close. At the very least, you must tell the client you want to stay in contact with him in an effort to establish an ongoing relationship and introduce future products.
- Sam Bahraini, VoloForce
13. Ask for help
Send customers an email or call asking for a little help with something. People want to feel they are useful and helpful. It will open another line of communication, and it will continue the relationship.
- Andrew Howlett, Rain