This article concludes a 2-part series on how to get more customers during the festive season. You can read the first article at this link.
If you followed the tips in the first article, you’ll have an idea about how you can meet new prospects or potential sources of referrals at parties and social events. You also know how to arrange for and conduct follow up meetings.
However, challenges do occur as you follow up with people you met during the festive season. It’s also not always possible to follow up with people for meetings when you have a physical business.
I explored some useful tactics in the previous article. Here are additional strategies you can use to follow up and get more customers during and after the festive season.
More Ways to Follow Up Effectively After Festive Events
What if someone doesn’t want to meet you?
Not everyone you meet will be interested in meeting you physically or on phone after the event. If this happens, you can:
- Ask them if it’s OK to follow them up once or twice a year to find out how they’re doing.
- Invite them to sign up to receive regular tips and resources from you. If they say “Yes” add them to your mailing list.
- Drop them if they’re not interested in further communication with you.
Consider starting an email newsletter that you send to your prospects and customers on a regular basis. This newsletter can go out weekly, fortnightly or monthly.
Such a newsletter will position you as an expert in your industry or niche. It will also be your best non-intrusive follow-up tool because you’re keeping yourself in people’s minds without being too much in their faces.
When you get people’s contacts, keep in mind that these people have trusted you.
DO NOT:
- Send them spammy forwarded messages.
- Add them to Facebook or Whatsapp groups without their permission.
- Keep calling, emailing or sending them messages to try and coerce them into becoming your customers.
- Share their contacts with other people.
Be a professional at all times and only send them valuable tips with periodic offers or updates.
What if your business is physical and you can’t meet each prospect in person?
If you have a physical business, then invite the prospect to come and visit the business. Here’s what you can do.
1. Have an offer
Decide what you can offer prospects during this season to entice them to come and visit your business.
2. Print the offer
Before going to the party or event, print 2-sided business cards. Have your contacts on the front and the offer on the back of the card.
If you want to put a time limit on the offer, then don’t print too many cards because they’ll expire. I find it better to put a time limit as it creates a sense of urgency.
That, however, is a matter of personal preference. You can try some cards with the time limit and others without so that you see which ones have a better response rate.
What if you can’t or don’t want to print the offer?
If you don’t have the time and/or money for printing new cards, have someone create a stamp for you with an offer. Leave empty space on the stamp for the expiry date.
Stamp the back of your regular business cards with the offer and write out the expiry date, which should be within the festive season.
3. Give out your cards
During the festive season, carry these cards to events and use them instead of your regular business cards.
When handing out your card, turn it to show the person your offer. Then tell them about the deadline if you have one.
Again, do this lightly so that it doesn’t seem as if you’re desperate to have them come to your business. You can simply offer it to them as your holiday promotion or gift.
4. Remember to follow up
Don’t forget to follow up after the events. This means that you too should have gotten business cards or contacts from the people you gave your offer to.
Call them and remind them of the offer within 72 hours of meeting them. It’s easy for people to forget about your offer because there is so much happening during the festive season.
On the business end, be ready for more customers when people take up the offers and come to your business. Such visits are precious because they provide you with an opportunity to turn the offer into a new customer relationship.
Examples of Offers
Below are examples of offers for different service businesses. Keep in mind that people have to present the card in order to get the offer or discount.
- Restaurant: Free meal or give a discount for their meal.
- Hair salon: Free wash and set or treatment (or discounted offer).
- Hotel: Invite them to come for lunch and check out the place, If they have a business, you can offer them special discounts for meetings and events.
- Dentist: Give a free check-up i.e. no consultation fees.
- Office cleaning services: Discounted holiday office cleaning offer.
- Consultant: Complimentary 30 minute consultation (in your area of expertise).
- Coach: Complimentary 30 minute strategy/clarity/discovery session.
- Trainer: Complimentary 1 hour motivational talk to their team (e.g. a talk with tips on how to set their goals for the New Year).
- Web designer: Free assessment of their current website (if they have one) or complimentary consultation to help them plan their website (if they don’t have one).
In all, make sure that your promotion is unique and different from other offers in your industry. Also, take care not to offer something that will break your profits.
It’s Time to Attend Events, Network and Follow Up!
Using networking to get prospects and customers during the festive season can be a fun activity if you let it be.
As one of my clients once told me, networking is not scary when you think of it as just having conversations with people. You can have conversations everywhere, even with strangers.
When you think of networking in this way, then your conversations with people will change. You will be more focused on helping people and positioning your business as a solution if that is what they need.
Customers are people around you. However, they won’t know you exist or that you can help them unless you tell them about what you do.
I’ve gotten amazing coaching clients from unusual places. For example:
- I gave a lift to my sister’s friend after attending my sister’s baby shower. The friend asked me what I do. I followed the system outlined in this and the previous article. She signed up for coaching a week later.
- I’d gone to the bank to get a new debit card and the customer service attendant got interested in what I do. She signed up for coaching a week later.
- Someone I met at a networking event sent me a referral 2 years later. The person I met didn’t become a client or sign up for my newsletter. However, the system worked so well that she remembered who to send her friend to years later when the friend was thinking of starting a business.
The system works. You just have to use it correctly and consistently.
A Summary of the Process
Here’s how you can put the information in this series into practice. This will help you get new customers during the festive season or lay the foundation for amazing business relationships next year. You can also use this process to get more customers in non-festive months.
- Trust yourself more.
- Market and network like crazy.
- Give your customers an outstanding experience or help them achieve amazing results.
- Ask for referrals on a consistent basis.
- Hold 2 meetings with prospects or invite 2 people to your business each week.
- If your industry allows you to, collect testimonials from happy customers and share the testimonials in your online and offline marketing.
- Follow up consistently and correctly.
- Watch your customer base grow.
I conclude this mini-series with something I tell my clients:
Being good at what you do doesn’t mean that you will have a successful business.
Most skilled people concentrate on the skill and service provision side. They forget the marketing and management aspects of their businesses.
As business expert C.J. Hayden notes in her book GET CLIENTS NOW!:
“…a person with mediocre professional skills and amazing marketing skills will succeed more than a person with excellent professional skills and mediocre marketing skills.”
Marketing is the lifeline of your business. Attending events, especially during the festive season, is one of the easiest ways for service businesses to get customers.
Couple this with consistent follow up and you’ll have a marketing funnel that produces results all year round.
You can hire excellent and skilled workers, but you are the main marketer of your business. So network more, follow up effectively and find the amazing customers who are waiting for you to help them.
Challenge yourself to put the information in this mini-series into practice and see the difference it will make in your business. Also, feel free to share your experience with us in the comments.
(Image credit: Unsplash)
