Tuesday, March 11, 2008

How Often Do I Stay In Touch?

by Mark Satterfield
Gentle Rain Marketing

One question that comes up a lot is, HOW OFTEN to
stay in contact with
your prospective clients? There are a number of factors
that go into
the determination, but here's an important one.

The readiness of your prospect to buy.

For example, if you're in a business with a long lead time between
when people first "raise their hands" and when they ultimately
decide to contract for services, you'd be best served by adopting
a 20 to 30-day stay in touch sequence. (Although some may find
this hard to believe,this would be considered a rather
conservative schedule).

Alternatively is a service such as mine. When people are looking for
marketing solutions they tend to be looking for something they can
implement right now.

There is likely to be a significant event (usually a
slow down in their business) that causes them to finally
get serious about putting in place a system for getting
more new clients.

So they tend to look at a lot of options and usually make decisions
about what to do within 60 days (or decide to do nothing which also
impacts the stay in touch strategy!)

Thus for businesses such as mine, it is a good strategy to
be in touch very frequently during that crucial first 60 days.

But what if some of your clients have immediate needs
and other don't?

Does the strategy for how often to be in touch shift over time?

Does varying the method by which you stay in touch
make a difference?

Are some methods more effective than others?

To what extent should telemarketing play a role?

What's the best way to automate much of the process?

What works better, HTML newsletters or text emails?

How can you keep content fresh and interesting without
spending too much time developing the messages?

When does it start to pay off?

Yes, there are a lot of questions about staying in touch.
And I'm going to do my very best to answer these
(and others that my Inner Circle members have been sending in)
during my next Inner Circle program on
March 20th at NOON EST.

Not a member yet? You can sign up here
http://www.GentleRainInnerCircle.com

For those of us who offer high value services it's important
to keep in mind that the "sale" isn't made with our lead generation
materials.

Nor is it made by our website. The key to converting large percentages
of prospects into clients is a function of WHAT WE SAY and HOW
FREQUENTLY we're in touch.

I hope you will join me for this webinar. I think you will find it to
be an extremely valuable program.

Best Regards,
Mark

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