{"id":332,"date":"2011-05-25T10:25:32","date_gmt":"2011-05-25T10:25:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.matriximpact.com\/fsf\/?p=332"},"modified":"2011-05-25T10:25:32","modified_gmt":"2011-05-25T10:25:32","slug":"what-happens-after-they-become-customers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/matriximpact.com\/site\/2011\/05\/25\/what-happens-after-they-become-customers\/","title":{"rendered":"What Happens AFTER They Become Customers?"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is the $1,000,000 question isn’t it? We spent the last 6 articles talking about everything you can do to generate leads using the S.I.T. Lead Generation System<\/a><\/span>. What we haven’t talked about yet is the next step.<\/p>\n

To recap,\u00a0S.I.T. Lead Generation<\/a><\/span> is a customer engagement system. The ultimate purpose is to deliver an ongoing stream of qualified leads to your sales team. \u00a0What makes it uniquely effective is its ability to also deepen the relationship between suspect\/prospect\/customer and company\/salesperson. It has both cumulative and immediate impact in varying degrees based on strategy and tactics. But the key, at its heart, is building real interpersonal relationships.<\/p>\n

No matter what sales methodology you subscribe to, you can never escape the fact that sales is rooted in relationships with real people.\u00a0Essentially S.I.T. is about becoming uncommonly RELEVANT with our contacts to the point where we transcend “basic selling.”<\/p>\n

So for the purpose of today, let’s JUMP over the sales process (we will hit it HARD in subsequent articles I PROMISE<\/strong>) and talk about utilizing S.I.T. with the people that we invested all that time in building relationships, our customers.<\/p>\n

The Crime<\/strong><\/p>\n

It is a fact, as plain and real as it is ugly, most sales organizations do a TERRIBLE job staying in touch with customers after the sale. I say ‘sales organizations’ because the mind set starts at the top. More often than not, management is more worried with next month’s sales numbers to the exclusion of the relationships you had to build to get last month’s sales numbers.<\/p>\n

<\/strong>The truly criminal thing is we have put in a boatload of time and effort to make this system work, but have simply lost the will to maintain it.\u00a0Why should we essentially CHOOSE to WASTE the fruit of our labor ? If the system is executed properly we can continue to deepen the relationships and mine our current customers for cross selling, up-selling, referrals, networking, industry experience and many other opportunities benefiting both parties.<\/p>\n

The Motive<\/strong><\/p>\n

It is always about time isn’t it? “I don’t have enough time to reach out to them” or “I know I need to call my old customers but I have a proposal to put together.” These aren’t evil\u00a0motives,\u00a0they are just WRONG. <\/strong>You have to program into your daily\/weekly schedule current customer touches. Think of it like breathing, you don’t do it you DIE<\/strong>!<\/p>\n

It is important to note, these touches can’t ONLY happen when the customer is having problems or that is how they will associate you, with a PROBLEM. Just like in when we began using S.I.T. these touches need to be proactive not reactive.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Means<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is the beauty part. The essential structure is in place. We are already executing a successful S.I.T. system. We know how to schedule touches, what delivery systems to use, how to build relevant content, and more (all of which can be seen in previous FSF<\/strong> posts\u00a0here<\/a><\/span>, here<\/a><\/span>, here<\/a><\/span> and here<\/a><\/span>). We just need to re-task and tweak for customers instead of suspects\/prospects.<\/p>\n

The Opportunity<\/strong><\/p>\n

You have a chance to develop a long-term relationship with your customers that can be rewarding in a number of ways. Developing CURRENT relationships as opposed to building NEW relationships is pretty similar. The difference lies in 2 specific areas:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. The Depth: Because of your existing relationship you can go deeper into the what makes the customer tick, finding out even more pertinent facts. They will be much more open and you can really flesh out their profile.<\/li>\n
  2. Risk vs. Reward: The people in your existing relationships come to depend on you. They made a business decision to go with you over a competitor, implicitly trusting you. This is why it is imperative to not only keep up with the current level of customer service, but to improve upon it. You don’t want to put the kibosh on all your hard work because of LAZINESS or worse APATHY. Demonstrate how you value your customers by continuing to deepen and strengthen the relationship with them, I promise it will pay back HUGE DIVIDENDS!<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    The “Beginning”<\/strong><\/p>\n

    Just like life, a customer relationship is a journey, not a destination. There will be ups and downs, twists and turns but when handled correctly it will be the most prosperous journey of all!<\/p>\n

    All righty folks, that puts the finishing touches on the S.I.T. Lead Generation System. I strongly urge you to re-read and\/or bookmark the other posts that define the system in more detail. Also, don’t forget to go to my website for more information and you can always email me if you have any specific questions. Next article we will set off in a new direction, but with the same goals, helping to increase your sales revenue and profit while improving your productivity.<\/strong><\/p>\n

    Until then remember, you can either make sales or you can make excuses but you can’t do both…. <\/strong>I am outta of here!<\/strong><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    This is the $1,000,000 question isn’t it? We spent the last 6 articles talking about everything you can do to generate leads using the S.I.T. Lead Generation System. What we haven’t talked about yet is the next step. To recap,\u00a0S.I.T. Lead Generation is a customer engagement system. The ultimate purpose is to deliver an ongoing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[25,53,55,44,54,45,46,47,48,42,49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-332","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-best-practice","category-cold-call","category-customer","category-lead-generation","category-leads","category-new-contact-touches","category-prospects","category-s-i-t-nurture-prospecting-system","category-sit-touch","category-sales-3-0","category-suspects"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/matriximpact.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/matriximpact.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/matriximpact.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/matriximpact.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/matriximpact.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=332"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/matriximpact.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/matriximpact.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/matriximpact.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/matriximpact.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}