Paul offers tips on growing your business with existing customers, and when that should happen.
Show Notes
Intention is more important than timing. First, make sure the customer is fully satisfied with their experience.
In your review with the customer, give them the opportunity to complain.
Remember, always reinforce the value you brought to their experience.
Look for additional problems to solve for the customer.
The sooner you can reach out after the sale the better.
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When should I reach out to customers after the sale?
(Transcribed from podcast)
On today’s episode, we are going to answer a question from the website. This question comes from Beth, and Beth is in the banking industry. So, here’s the situation—we’re going to broaden this question a little bit. So Beth wants to know, “After a loan payoff, how soon should I reach back out to the customer?”
So let’s broaden this question a little bit more. And what Beth is fundamentally asking is, When should I reach out to the customer after the sale is complete or after they have finished their overall end-to-end experience? That’s the question we’re going to answer on today’s show: When should I reach back out to them?
Before we get into answering that question, just a reminder, make sure you go to Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Chapters, wherever you get your books, and pick up your latest copy of Selling Through Tough Times. The book continues to sell like crazy. It hit the Amazon #1 new release, twice actually. So, it’s a powerful book. It’s a powerful message. Especially right now, as we’re facing an uncertain environment. You’re going to learn how to build mental resilience. And also, you’re going to learn the skills you need to help sell your solution through any downturn. So pick up your copy. Again, Selling Through Tough Times.
Let’s get back to Beth’s question. So here’s the situation. You’ve got a customer—they place an order, they experience your solution, and it’s like, okay, what do we do next? How soon should we reach back out to that customer? So, what you’re trying to do here is, you want to build on the momentum that you have already generated with this customer. And ideally, you want to reach back out to that customer to grow your business with them. So I’m going to give you a few tips and ideas that can help you as you go out there and reach back out to existing customers.
So the first tip, and this is absolutely critical. I know that, Beth, you asked, “When should I reach out?” But there is something more important than timing. Intention is more important than timing. Don’t be as concerned about the timing of when you reach out, but be more focused on your intention as you reach out to this customer. And here’s what I mean by that.
When we reach out to a customer after the sale, after they’ve already experienced our solution, the intention of that call should be to improve, get better, and to make sure that customer is fully and completely satisfied with their experience. So that should be our intent when we’re reaching out. The goal is to review their experience, to ask questions, to tinker. I’ve talked about tinkering on previous podcasts. This whole notion of tinkering is looking for ways to enhance, to improve, to fix your solution, to make it better for the customer. So, the intention is to reach out to make sure that that customer is 100% satisfied.
I would also encourage you to do a thorough review of their experience. So when you’re talking to your customer, ask them, “Hey, did we meet your expectations throughout the entire process, even before the sale, during the transition, and now that we’re wrapping things up? Did we meet your expectation along the way?”
Now also give your customers an opportunity to complain. That’s so important. Most customers don’t actually complain. There’s been research—I think McKinsey did a study. They found that only 3% of customers actually complain. When you’re conducting this thorough review, ask your customer, “Hey, was there anything annoying—like those minor little annoyances—things that bothered you, but not enough to call us and tell us about it? Were there any little things that we can do to improve it?” This is an important question, because you’re giving the customer the opportunity to share feedback. So that’s what you want to do is you want to make sure that you’re reviewing and how their experience went.
You also want to reinforce your value when you’re having these conversations, when you’re reaching out to that customer. Reinforcing the value is about reminding the customer of the value that you’ve delivered, and also getting credit for the impact that it has on their business. When you’re reminding them of the value, it becomes real, it becomes tangible, and it also sets the stage for leveraging, which is the next thing we’re going to talk.
Once the customer is more aware of your value, they’re more likely to want to continue to work with you or look for new opportunities. So we want to reinforce that value. You can do that through documenting your value. Really, in essence, reviewing your value in the experience, you’re kind of reinforcing that value along that review. So that’s part of it: a customer satisfaction survey, customer testimonials. These are all great reinforcement tools.
And then, finally, the last tip: you want to look for additional problems to solve with this customer. Think about it. Now that you’ve created a great experience—you’ve reviewed it with your customers, they’ve given you feedback on how to improve, you look for ways to create more value, you’ve reinforced that value—the next logical thing is to look for more ways to grow your business with your customer. And the best way to do that is by looking for additional problems to solve. Ask your customer, “Hey, what other challenges are you facing?” Ask your customers, “What additional problems are you experiencing?” “Are there any other headaches that I can help out with?” “Would you be interested in learning more about some of our newer products that can help solve some common problems in your industry?” When we frame up the conversation as problem solving, the customer doesn’t view this as being sold anything. Instead, we’re creating value for them. Look for additional problems to solve with your customers.
So, Beth, I hope that helps out. Again, I know you want to know, “Okay, when should I reach out to the customer after the sale?” The intention of the call and the reach-out is more important than the timing of it. But with that being said, I did want to offer one tip when it comes to timing—the sooner you can reach out after they’ve experienced your solution, the better. And that’s because it’s fresh, it’s top of mind to them. The longer we wait, the more other priorities get buried on top of the meeting that you’re trying to coordinate. So, the sooner the better when it comes to reaching out after the sale.
Make it a big day.
