How Follow Up Can Bring Better Return on Investment for Your Accounting Business
It’s a sad truth but only a very small number of customers book a service or buy a product the first time they meet a salesperson or hear/read a sales pitch. Here’s something interesting: 48% of salespeople never follow up with their prospect, only 2% of sales is made on the first contact and 80% of sales are made in between the fifth and twelfth contact. What do these numbers say?
They only mean follow up is a necessity.
You have two options when it comes to follow up; automated or manual. The latter is almost unrealistic because as your accounting business grows, so are the numbers of leads that need follow up. When you already have a growing list of new clients, it’s hard to follow them up one-by-one and that translates to potential new clients slipping away.
Selling your firm’s service is not likely happen the first time you meet a client. When you collected the business card or your team got a hold of the decision maker, that is just the beginning of a cycle. You have to build rapport and gain the client’s trust. This is when follow up comes to rescue.
Follow up could be in means of simple welcome notes or following up to close a sale. As simplistic as the life cycle of a follow up that would be almost impossible to do when your network starts to grow. Add up the fact that your accounting firm has to crunch out large number of works in daily basis — surely, follow up simply becomes less of a priority.
The good thing is automation and CRM software like Infusionsoft can help do followup with ease and efficiency. Automation makes it possible to send personalized, targeted follow up messages to multiple contacts; sequenced according to the contact’s behavior and activities. For instance, if you have a new prospective client added to your list, an automated, personalized welcoming message is automatically sent to that person’s email.
Follow up is essentially a lifeline for an accounting business. If you follow up a web lead within the next 5 minutes, you are 90% likely to convert them to a client. With your lead list continue growing, it is almost impossible to follow up each of them within that 5-minute timeframe. Automated followup can do that for your even in less than 60 seconds. You just have to set template responses according to your lead types. So the basic picture is you use the same message for each type of the same lead — but it is strategically personalised and targeted.
Do you know that 47% of larger purchases are from nurtured leads; ones where relationship is build from the first time they get a hold of the company even after sales. This is why constant follow up is very important to growing businesses and return on investment.
With a technology as powerful as Infusionsoft, you can: keep track of accounts receivable, marketing reports, lead scoring, payment processing and do marketing automation. Sensitive data is encrypted with https protocols for all pages. Data backup in multiple locations is available.
With it you can also manage calendar, tasks and customer relationships. Simplify routine tasks and segment clients accordingly. Create targeted campaigns through behavioral triggers.
Now the floor is yours. Sit down, do the work and fill the funnel. Leverage the power of Infusionsoft to make the most of follow ups for better growth on return on investment, productivity and customer relationship.