ASK MARK!
Your Question:
We have a pretty good customer service outreach program to make sure clients are happy with our services and their information is up-to-date. How can we turn a "well client" into a sales opportunity?
ASK MARK!'S Answer:
Well clients are great opportunities to extend more services and solutions to your client and can be a great action item to help build customer loyalty.
A typical "well client" call might go something like this:
"Hi, this is...from...and we wanted to confirm we have the right information and ask if there have been any issues over the past few weeks / months?"
A typical response might be:
"Yes, the information you have is correct and I haven't heard anything bad, so everything must be good."
The key to any outbound call, either by a salesperson or a customer service rep., is research and prepartion.
- Look at the last two to three month's messages and see if there are any interesting trends or messages that were unique. Draw attention to those messages in your call. "I noticed that you are getting a lot of calls regarding... Is this going to be a continuing trend and should there be more specific instructions that we should put into place?" Or... "I see that we took a call that was completely outside of the box and wanted to make sure we handled it correctly..."
- If your client is a publicly-traded company, it may help to take a look at their stock prices. Stock up? Good time to raise rates or offer new / more solutions. Stock down? Might not be a good time to raise rates. You may also find out that they are involved in merger / acquisition talks which could be very good for future business and if you are able to bring that up in a discussion, it makes you look very informed.
- Look at their website. Is their website dynamic and full of informaiton? Do they have a 'request for more information' page, a page to schedule appointments or other pages that you could use to give them more return on their investment on their web page? Are they part of a larger umbrella company? Are there other departments / sites you could provide the same services for?
- Ask for a referral. Of course, no "well client" call is complete without asking for a referral. Let them know about your referral plan. $100.00 gas card / AMEX card or credit to their account...etc.
If you have a question for ASK MARK! or have a specific marketing topic you would like to see covered in an upcoming issue, please write to: askmark@atsi.org.
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