Do you follow up on all your contacts and leads? Honestly? Hmmm, more than likely you’re not doing enough follow up. I haven’t seen any small business owner yet who is, and I include myself in this category.

Often it’s because you have no time to get it done, or no idea what to write or send your customers or prospects? But think about it, could you contact all your past customers with a special offer, some news about new products or trends that they should be aware of? How hard could that be?

The bottom line is that if you’re not keeping in touch with your customers, prospects and contacts on a consistent and effective basis, then you’re not only missing out on a lot of sales, but you’re also leaving your contacts wide open to being seduced away from under your nose.

You’ve basically got to own the market share of your customers brain for your particular product or service. I think one of the army general’s said it best - “It’s a battle for hearts and minds” He was talking about Iraq, but the sentiment is the same.

You need to be at the forefront of their minds, on the top of the morning post and in the inbox on their computer, and basically in their face – so that they’ll think of you first when they need to buy your particular product.

It’s an idiosyncrasy of our mental hardwiring, that we ascribe people and companies traits (in our own minds) We have to do this in order to process all the information that comes to us on a daily basis. Otherwise we literally couldn’t process the world around us in time for us to function regularly. Our brains need to create some shortcuts, so that once we’ve evaluated someone or something and decided what it means to us, it’s pretty hard to change our opinions on the subject.

Some companies take advantage of this and even create ownership of particular words in our heads, I’m thinking of Volvo and the word “safety” for example, or Kate Moss and the word “edgy” You could argue that President Obama owns the word “hope” You get my point?

So what’s the best way to gain this market share? The answer is of course, that it depends – on you, your personality, your creativity, your type of business, the amount of money available to you and even maybe your technological knowledge.

So while we figure this one out, the key question to ask yourself is: What can I do, given what I have to create a blanket around my customers so that none of my competitors can snuggle under the blanket? So that if they come and try to lift the corner of the blanket your customer will tell them “Sorry, x is sitting here, this seat is taken!”

What can you do to generate that kind of loyalty, what can you give, send, share or create? Don’t rattle your brain alone trying to figure this out, ask everyone you know, you’ll be surprised where the answers might come from.

Just make sure its something you’re excited about doing – that way you can be sure you’ll stick to doing it !

Tags: Follow up leads, market share

This entry was posted on Monday, March 9th, 2009 at 8:29 am and is filed under Follow up. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.