How To Raise Quality And Multiply Profit Without Relying (or needing) Volume: A Real Business Sales System Part 2
July 17th, 2019 // 12:59 pm @ Scott Manning
The point of last week and now this week’s message is based on the premise that more customers are lost than won. In dentistry, we say more treatment leaves than gets done. This is true in any business.
Most businesses are only getting the low hanging fruit, the easy stuff, the people who are already determined to say yes in the first place and have made up their minds to become your customer, client, patient.
The real breakthroughs in a business come when you commit to helping more people make up their minds. You are able to cultivate much deeper success into the lead, prospect, customer conversion process by extending and continuing the relationship, the selling experience, the nurturing and education far after the first or initial point of contact.
I always ask my doctors and their teams the following…
“When does the ‘new’ patient experience end?”
Most practices (if they do actually answer), say “the first visit.” They act as though a new person comes in, goes through exam and cleaning, and then out the door. Experience over.
Instead, I teach them that the “new patient experience” is over when the treatment is done, when the patient has completed their dentistry, and (take it even another step further) when they have multiplied themselves by referring at least one other person like them.
In other words, it really should never be over until you have done all you can to help your customer (and the customer’s family and friends), based on your services, products, and skills – then you’re done.
Some businesses relationships can go on forever. Others might be one-and-done but you have to be very clear on what “done” means and when it happens. Then reverse engineer and organize everything in your business to be set up to facilitate and bring to fruition – that!
So, when you stop the experience at the first phone call or the first physical engagement or the first time the customers buys ‘one thing’ or buys ‘nothing’ … then you fail yourself and them. You loose out on the biggest and greatest opportunity of all to grow your business profitably by getting more out of what you already have got.
That means you have to dig deeper and go beyond what you usually do in order to develop more of the backend funnel. Not just have “new” customers, clients and patients but have ways of taking people that never made it into the sales process in the first place, those that left it, those that went through it but didn’t do anything, and those that did some but not all and you have to finish the job.
The most effective way of doing this is to create a protocol and system around communication that makes sure you are staying in front of these segments of ‘unconverted’ customers.
For today, your assignment is to first assess what you are doing now, if anything. Then identify gaps that exist in between each of the stages and close those gaps.
Next, you want to organize your follow-up system with a mix of personal touches and of ongoing information using a multi faceted approach. Of course, depending on your ‘selling philosophy,’ your personnel and in general how aggressive you want to be.
Here’s what I can tell you as a business owner, it is your responsibility to maximize every asset and get the greatest return possible on what you are doing. As I say all of the time: you only help the people who say yes. In other words, every time you cultivate one more customer, client, or patient to move forward from where they are now to where they deserve to be – you win and so do they.
If, on the other hand, you have no backend approach then not only are you missing out on the easiest and most profitable money of them all in your business, they are missing out too.
Businesses that are at the mercy of their customers’ actions and waiting around for people to make up their minds don’t ever reach their true potential. Businesses that take action proactively and deliberately with systems that dig deeper into the sales and marketing funnel create incredible momentum and life changing results for all involved.
And that means you can get more value with less quantity and you can break away from the need for such a high volume of incoming leads because you are now focused on developing the quality of every one of them and seeing it through to the finish.
Take this responsibility seriously and it will lead to a real business foundation and stability that results in it working for you so you don’t have to work so hard for it.
Category : Blog
