You finally closed that prospect that you have been working on for months (maybe even years). You reached out to him 7+ times, used A/B follow ups, continued to address and overcome his objections down to the excuse that he had to take his dog for a walk, or ask the tooth fairy for her sage advice. You can finally breathe a sigh of relief as you see that order roll in.
I’m kidding, it’s never over. So yes you turned that prospect into a customer, however, your next goal is to keep that customer and make him a customer for life (C4L). This is much easier said than done. Over the years I have had a few different businesses. Going way back to selling candy, having vending machines, selling blenders, selling tens of thousands of text books on Amazon (while holding zero inventory- first million dollar business), running a limo and exotic car rental business, drop shipping thousands of products from china all over the globe before dropshipping became as popular as having ‘entrepreneur’ in your IG bio (not going to lie, took me 6 Google searches to spell it right since the word is a tad overused in today's society). And now growing the Trading Experts business (the second million dollar business). Through all of those different ventures, my C4L’s have continued to grow because the customers are following the seller, not the product or service.
There is one client in particular who comes to mind. He has bought candy from me, has bought textbooks from me, rented my limo half dozen times, ordered from my drop shipping site (not even knowing it was my site), has became a TE member, he has came on the TE trips and I manage his investments for his family as well as his personal accounts, and on top of that I helped him get his mortgage and helped him in purchasing his first home (that was a mouthful). Now all of those times I was providing value, saving him time and making him money along the way so I never once had to sell to him. Frankly there were times when I was doing the opposite because I was just trying to help him first, not my pocket (which is exactly what most salesmen do, focus on themself instead of helping). There was a time when he wanted to take the limo into the city with only 4 people, I asked why not just grab an Uber it will be much cheaper? To him the experience was worth that much more than the cost. Now this will not always be the case, there will be times that you do all the hard work of turning a prospect into a customer only for said person to now hate you no matter what you’ve done (people are weird, the guy in the post above who said Love ya guys!! quit the next day and hates us), sometimes it's your own fault, maybe you oversold and under-delivered; we have all done that once or twice.
Now when you focus on helping first there will inevitably be times when you end up hurting your own pocket while helping. There was another (almost) C4L who was with another financial advisor, now it's never wise to bad mouth your competition as it makes you look weak. You can spot the flaws in how the prospect is being taken advantage of by asking simple questions, giving them the ammo to figure it out themselves. This was no small fry either, he had $3,400,000 with this advisor, the other guy was charging him 2.50% a year to manage his account. Now for someone with less than $1,000,000 that is a pretty standard rate, however for his account size it should have been around half that (at least). Now you would think when you are paying an advisor $85,000 to manage your money, he would work hard to make sure that you made money right? One look at his portfolio, and it was all high cost Mutual Funds ranging from 1% to 1.5% (don't forget the fee he was charging on top of this). After a few minutes it was clear as day why this client was down on a year when the average person was up double digits. After showing him this, he angrily called his advisor and in a snap got his rate cut in half (a $40,000 saving). After saving him $40,000 when there was still another $40,000 in fees that he was burning annually, he was still loyal to the other advisor who was stuffing his pockets while providing no value. As much as I wanted to shake the shit out of this prospect, the thought of leaving his advisor was the same as the sucker who knows his wife is banging the pool boy, the gardener, and his best friend but sits back and takes it like a schmuck. Or maybe I didn’t provide enough value? Time will tell because that was only the first round.
Now from my own experience, especially when you are trying to keep a C4L, it's crucial on how their experience is during The Honeymoon Phase, which is those first 90 days when they go from being prospected to being catered for as a customer or client. Now you might be thinking, fuck, I just got the sale and barely made money on the sale, now you want me to do even more? Yes, you bet your ass I am because you opened the gate, forget about the first order and focus on the next 10 or 20 orders. For myself, during my rapport-building process I will take notes, name of your girlfriend, names of pets, your Birthday, places you are traveling to, profession you are in etc. Now if I know your Birthday is Friday, instead of being like most fake friends on FB who all say Happy Birthday because they get the Facebook reminder, I will shoot them a quick text the day before, people always remember the first and the last, I’d rather be early. If the person has a dog, you know how easy it is to mail the little buddy a surprise gift? Less than a can of Coke, however that little toy will be worth it's weight in gold for the rapport you just built up.
Little unexpected gifts go a long way, forget the expensive elaborate bullshit, focus on the things that hit home and the things or people that your customers care about.
Birthdays - say Happy Birthday early (the day before).
Hey John, I know your Birthday is tomorrow just wanted to be the first to wish you a Happy Birthday, anything special planned for the big day?
Has a dog - know the dog’s name and send the buddy a dog toy (if you need a site let me know and I will send you a link, and for less than a few bucks you can mail them a toy).
Newborn babies/kids - as soon as they mention they have kids, ask their names and write that shit down, nothing worse than having to say “how is your son doing?” when you could be saying “how is Johnny doing in soccer?!”
If the person reads - you can Amazon Prime them a book you liked with a note for less than a Chipotle burrito, buy the cheapest used book that has prime, so you can include a note by clicking “add a gift receipt”.
The goal of the gift is to show your thought, not the cost, sending costly gifts can send the wrong message and eventually can become something they expect, a habit you do not want to form with your customers. Keep them personal and you should be able to turn some of your customers into lifers. This isn’t rocket science, it's common sense stuff, we can all create our own Rolodex. Writing down the important stuff is step one, step two is to use it and use your imagination, if you’re going to write a thank you for your time thank you letter just shoot yourself now. Have fun with it, I’ll be waiting for the text of the first THANK YOU!!! You get from one of your C4L.
Trust me, there will always be a place in the world for your business if you take care of your customers…...after the sale
More Value Task - This is going to be an easy task if you have some clients already. Surprise them with a small gift, max $10 and let me know what you sent them, once they receive it there’s a 90% chance they will hit you up. Now this is purely a rapport-building conversation, turn off the sales hat and be a human. If you are working with TE let me know the 3 members you closed or who you are working on closing (going to have to be creative in getting their address info without coming across as a nut-job) and I will cover the cost of the gift that is coming from you.