Keep New Clients and Your Sales

There is no such thing as a guaranteed sale. Dozens of things can happen to derail your efforts. This means you need to ensure that you keep the sale. Here are several strategies you can use in your business that will help you achieve this goal.

• Send acknowledgement or thank you:

Most salespeople take the sale and move on to the next prospect. Show your new customer that you value their business. By sending a thank-you card directly immediately after the sale, you differentiate yourself from your competition. For a more personal touch, hand deliver a coffee mug (with your company logo, of course!) loaded with candy.

• Regularly update new customers:

Keep new customers informed about things like production status, delivery, and shipment dates or schedules. Every customer is different. Detail oriented customers will require more frequent updates. At minimum, communicate with the customer through every critical turn between the sale and delivery.

• Send customers additional information of value.

This includes information that is relevant to their business such as articles, magazines, and newspaper clippings. It does not matter if they have already read the article because the gesture shows that you are paying attention to their business. However, do not send information about your product. This is not about you. It is about giving your new customer a reason to keep the sale with you.

• Depending on the size of your sale, you could send a book that will help the client’s business.

There is a multitude of books today that address about every business situation. For instance, you could send books that focus on communication, leadership, sales, or customer service. Attach a short note explaining why you sent the book. Did you know that you can order many popular motivational books with your company logo imprinted?

• Reinforce their buying decision.

For example, you could send testimonials from satisfied customers or even ask one of your existing customers to call the new client. This gives the customer the reassurance they want to have to make sure they made a good decision.

• Invite feedback.

One of the most important follow up calls you can make is the one after the product you have sold has actually been put to use. Ask how they or the end users reacted to receiving the product. Invite positive and negative comments- positive comments can be used for testimonials and negative ones to make adjustments for greater satisfaction in the future and possibly even avoid losing the customer’s business on the next order.

By incorporating these simple strategies into your routine, you will be able to differentiate yourself from the competition and increase your odds of keeping every sale together through completion, resulting in higher customer satisfaction and a greater percentage of repeat business.