The most important individual in your business is your client. Always!

Behind every purchasing decision lies an individual. Companies do not make decisions. Individuals in companies make decisions. That individual trusts you enough, or likes you enough, to invest money in your product or service. I am, of course, making an assumption - that your product is adequate. Not excellent, nor perfect - merely adequate. [Before you flame me on this issue and tell me that excellence is your watchword etc. - please finish the article to follow the point I am making.]

Everybody that I consult with regarding reduced sales is convinced that the reason for the poor sales performance lies in the inadequacy of their product. So they spend heaps of time trying to perfect a product that is already good enough. But they spend absolutely no time focusing on the most important individual in the sales cycle - the client.

May I ask you to try something out for a moment? Try buying something from your own organisation - as a stranger. You will gain a better understanding of why your sales have little to do with your product quality, and a heck of a lot to do with the client experience! Which leads me to the question, how many of us spend any serious time defining what the client experience should be?

A few weeks ago I called my brother [who was in the market for a top end laptop PC] about the new HP Omnibook advertised on the front page of a national newspaper. Great price, all the features he needed, and a solid brand. Mike called the advertised number, and after 10 phone calls to each new person he was asked to call - he simply gave up and bought a top end Compaq instead! The client experience is more important than the product quality in determining sales.

Rather than delve into the intricate philosophy of sales and marketing, let me outline a few simple steps that I take with any individual product I'm trying to sell. (In this article, I regard product and service as the same thing - something you're trying to sell.)

Step 1. Pick any one product in your line-up. Exciting as it might be to try and economise on this by lumping all your clients and all your products into one bundle - don't! The experience of someone seeking a cure for haemorrhoids is vastly different than someone with a heart attack - and you want to define each experience.

Step 2. Why do people buy it? Make a list of all the reasons people want this product. What do they use it for? What benefits does it offer them? What triggers their buying decision?

Step 3. What do I need to know before making a buying decision? Factors here would include things like the price, delivery details, availability, terms and conditions - as well as those unique benefits the client gains from using your product as opposed to anyone else's.

Step 4. Write a series of brief letters explaining each of the factors you listed in step 3. Once you have done this, categorise them into 5 or 6 headings. You want to end up with 5 or 6 emails that you will send out over time to everyone enquiring about this product.

Step 5. Open an account at www.Autoresponder.co.za. Insert the 5 or 6 emails you wrote earlier into an autoresponder sequence. This allows them to be delivered to the prospect at a time that you choose. The first of the emails will usually go out immediately [within seconds] and your prospect will be stunned by the rapid response. The next might be 2 days later. And then 3 days after that. And then after a week, with the last one a month later. You choose the timing that suits your product.

Getting a prospect into the sequence is simple. Either he sends a blank email to the autoresponder address, or he fills in a form on your website, or you insert his address into the list manually.

They can be easily personalized - so that the recipient feels that you have taken the trouble to respond individually [which you have, technically speaking, except that you took the trouble a long time before the request!]

Advantages to you are immense. Firstly you will never lose a prospect in the wash. Secondly your client will perceive a high level of service because he is getting a consistent, personalized stream of information from you. This helps you create the initial perception of solid service. Thirdly, you will create a mailing list of people who were interested in that specific product. Although they might not purchase now, they will form a solid base of future prospects. As new developments occur in that field, you can e-mail them information. There is no cost to ad hoc e-mails to these groups of prospects.

These five steps help you to define the experience that you want your client to have in doing business with you. If you want to transcend to really exceptional client service, you can do the same thing for the post sales client. If you can imagine a client who has already purchased this product, try to ask yourself what questions that client might still have. What are the conditions of warranty? How long is the warranty? What additional services are available to help the client get better value from this purchase? Where can the client purchase consumables for this product? Who is the local service agent? You are limited only by your imagination.

Once again write a brief note about each of these issues. Once again open an autoresponder account and insert each of these issues as an individual e-mail. (The autoresponder sequence allows 20 e-mails - which is more than enough for almost any product!)

Since you can predict the arrival of each of these e-mails, it's very easy to offer tremendous value to your clients. For example how much would help both yourself and your client for him to be reminded of the first service - 6 months after buying that car? Or to be reminded that the warranty is about to expire and this might be a good time to invest in a service contract? Or to be reminded of a good place to purchase consumables - at the time when you expect the consumables to run out for the first time?

In doing this you will have defined a consistent customer experience, from the time that the customer first touches base with your company until right at the end of the buying cycle.

This will increase your initial sales. It will also reduce the number of complaints. And it will increase the number of clients coming back in the future.

I have chosen to use www.autoresponder.co.za to illustrate these examples. It's much easier to use a live company for explanations, and I have used the autoresponder product for the past 6 months - and found it exceptional. At R114 per month it's about the cheapest way that I know of to keep in touch with prospects. Why not try this concept out on one of your products and see what it does to client service and sales? If you want to see a working example, try sending a blank email to newsletter@autoresponder.co.za - and then think about how you can use it.

This article is written with no commercial benefit from www.autoresponder.co.za. That means that I would enjoy your comments [whether good or bad] but will not intercede if you have a bad experience [something I think is very unlikely]. I include this disclaimer because some folk insist on having bad experiences in places where I have good ones - and then want me to fix it! [And these same folk are usually uncomfortable with me earning any sort of profit from this weekly email.] Bottom line - can't have it both ways! I am happy to share the good stuff for free as long as you don't want my assistance in implementing or chasing. And I am happy to implement, chase or deliver as long as you allow me to make a profit. In this case no profit is involved.

© Peter Carruthers, www.petesweekly.co.za

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