Congratulations … You’ve made a sale! Now what?
Just because you’ve made the sale doesn’t mean the work of sales and marketing is complete. In a way, it’s just beginning because the real profit in your business comes from the repeat purchases, additional purchases and referrals your clients give you. With a streamlined post-sale process, you can optimize your return on each client.
And so you understand how it all works, let me show you where the post-sale process fits on the #1 B2B Client Acquisition Framework – the Client Magnet System.
The Client Magnet System is the complete model for uniting and aligning Sales and Marketing and creating an Inbound and Outbound client acquisition engine in your business – that attracts more leads, boosts sales and energizes your growth!
And remember, you want to align Sales and Marketing because they are just like the wheels of a car. You want them working together, moving in the same direction,
So you get this and not this.
There’s 4 layers, or stages: Tools, Traffic, Client Acquisition, and Post-Sale. We’ve gone over almost all of it in this video series, and in this video we are finishing the discussion by talking about the entire post-sale layer at the bottom of the map.
If you talk to most marketing experts, they say that client acquisitionisn’t a funnel. It’s a chalice.
The sale happens in the middle of the process, not at the end.
This is what the Client Magnet System map illustrates with the marketing funnel on the marketing side and the post-sale process at the bottom of the map.
The post sale process covers stages a client moves through after they have purchased. There are Five of them: Conversion, Onboarding, Ascension, Advocacy and Reactivation.
Let’s cover each of them:
Conversion
After you make the sale, what happens? There are many options and they depend on what you are selling, who the Client is, and how you are transacting the deal.
For instance, you could be selling face to face, taking and running the credit card information on the spot. After that, you might give the client a welcome kit and some customized membership card. Or, you may be selling over a zoom call. When the prospect says yes, you may need to instruct them on how to pay with their credit card, or ACH,, or where to mail a check. You may want to do this on the call, or send them an email after the meeting.
When you think about these options, and think about how you do it. You have to ask yourself, “what goes in that client kit? What is the membership card for? How do they pay and what are the instructions to do that and what should I say in the email?”
Whatever you do say, you should make sure they are happy, feel like they made a good decision and realize they got a great deal.
I’m a fan of scripting. From the introduction to saying goodbye, ideally, I want to have every part of it scripted because it makes it easier to test and identify the stuff and words that work and the words that don’t.
And just because the prospect has just bought, doesn’t mean we want to stop delivering value. And this is the first opportunity to do it.
Some sales people also find that they get more referrals by asking for them just after the sale. But, I will only try it once I’ve identified the perfect conversion process and exceed expectations from the time they say yes to when we say goodbye.
Onboarding
The onboarding process can start once the sale has been made, but it can also involve a separate call, like a kick-off call, a sequence of orientation and training videos, or a welcome email sequence.
There’s all kinds of things you can do … but the purpose of onboarding when selling a service is to set expectations and share the fulfillment schedule with your client. You can go over any additional payment terms, answer any questions and re-sell the value of your solution.
You want the client to walk away from the table thinking they have made a wise decision on every level – emotionally and logically.
If you are selling a product, the goals are the same, especially if you haven’t delivered yet because you have to deliver and install the product. This gives you time to build a sophisticated onboarding process that orients the client to the delivery and installation schedule as well as any training you will give them for using the product or equipment. And you could also offer them additional tutorials and training on what they could do with your product which goes beyond simply how it works.
Ascension
There’s two ways to think of ascension: upsells which include more and more expensive and inclusive product or service offerings, and repurchasing.
Let’s start with repurchasing, sometimes called continuity or reselling. Business models that are built around clients repurchasing are many times more likely to be successful than single purchase businesses.
Think of an electrician. They could go out and fix something that’s broken in a home or apartment, or they could help a family with a remodel. But once they make the sale, they do the job and have to go out looking for more work.
On the other hand, an electrician who works for new home or commercial builders has a source of work that repeats as the builders sell more projects.
It makes sense to build your business around clients repurchasing it’s a lot easier, and less expensive to sell an existing client than it is to find a new one.
Upselling requires different options on your products or services or a variety of product and service offerings that are complementary to the product you sold your client. They could be more or less expensive, it’s just the act of upselling creates opportunity to increase the average sale price.
The classic example is McDonalds asking if you want fries with that when you order a burger. But if you take a step back from the automatic, knee-jerk response of “You want fries with that?” You can see that it’s really a solution oriented question where the salesperson, let’s call them a salesperson, wants to ensure your dining experience is satisfying. If you come up and ask for a hamburger, they should wonder if you want fries. They should also wonder if you want a drink. These two things will make your meal more enjoyable. And if you don’t want those things, they don’t necessarily need to know why, but they should at least ask. And if they were on their game, they’d ask you if you wanted an apple pie as well.
This is what upselling does. It moves product. It sells services. Because once humans start buying, they will likely keep buying. So the best time to offer them a product/service is when they just bought one. And it’s easy to do if you are thinking about them and focused on delivering the optimal experience with your offerings.
Advocacy
Advocacy covers a couple areas. First there are referrals. Referrals are important for business growth and you need a regular campaign you run to encourage referrals from your existing clients.
You can run campaigns to encourage networking peers and others to refer clients to you as well, but who better to refer you than a business owner who has taken advantage of your offerings, and obtained excellent results and service? If they had friends or peers in their network who were business owners, they would be doing them a favor by referring you. So ask them to … regularly. Tell them who you are looking for and maybe even incentivize them to refer you.
The second part of advocacy revolves around testimonials and case studies. You see, you want your clients to be advocates for your services. Ideally, you want to promote them as they promote you. They can provide the social proof and evidence of your solutions and the benefit your company delivered them.
Testimonials and case studies are a part of your Sales Enablement content that you use in your sales and marketing funnel to encourage prospects to purchase.
Reactivation
Sometimes clients disappear, don’t renew, or simply go in a different direction. When that happens, you want a way to bring them back. This means keeping the relationship open. It may be on the back burner for the ex-client, but you still want to stay in front of them several times a year. You can update them on changes you have made to your offerings, or the results you have achieved for others. You can also call them and keep in touch.
This may seem fruitless, but don’t judge too quickly. Most reactivation campaigns have a 12% conversion rate. Which means they have a higher conversion rate than campaigns to a cold list. Plus, it’s less expensive and quicker.
We’ve just covered every stage and outcome for the entire post-sale layer of the Client Magnet System. When you combine these strategies with the strategies in every other layer of the map, you will have an unstoppable lead generating, money-making, client acquisition system that continually fills your sales pipeline, boosts revenue, and energizes your growth.
That’s all I’ve got for you this week.
Make sure to like, subscribe and hit the bell to get notifications when we put out new videos … we’ll see you in the next one!
::: Articles Discussed in the VLOG :::
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