Question

Topic: Strategy

Following Up On A Phone Call Or Direct Mailer Campaign

Posted by Anonymous on 7/11/2006 at 6:05 PM ET 1500 Points
Shannon D here trying to figure out the best ways to following up on my program.

I've called all the contacts on my list to get approval to send direct mailer packets (at a cost of $2.10 just to mail them). I am now waiting to follow-up with the next phone call to see if they got the material and are interested in our products. Keep in mind this is B2B!

This is a state to state project I doing so that I can keep up with what companies to call. We are trying to later expand our services to Direct store Deliever, but as for now, I'm trying to sell our business over the phone with no salespeople (many of you have already heard this story). I want to prove my place here, and I also would liek to get some great results!

What else should I be doing? I'm not faxing them because we don't have the money per project person. I don't have their E-mails, so that's out as well. Other than the follow-up call, what should I be doing to prove my efforts for my evaluation in a couple of months.

Are there any website trackers we can put on our site for how many people view our site and who they are? I already have a sec. to field my calls as they come as well as 3 office assistants, so fielding my efforts is not a problem.

I'd give a website, but my boss keeps us very low key because we are growing very, very fast, and large, and the longer our competitors stay out of what we are doing, the less they will know we are there. We have expanded our services in availablity, price, and technology and have managed to become one of the top 5 distributors in our field (Average of about 10 million net profit so far this year). But I can't do any press, and hardly any advertisment. We have been built totatlly off of reputation and service.

Help me out pros!

Shannon D
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RESPONSES

  • Posted by Pepper Blue on 7/12/2006 at 12:47 AM Accepted
    Hi ShannonD,

    You've received good advice above.

    One thing you will want to do as you drive more people to your website and to specific landing pages within your website is to redesign it - you will be glad you did, and I would strongly suggest you that start the planning of it right now, waiting will cost you a lot money in lost revenue in the near future.

    Especially if you are going to implement a stats program like Google Analytics, you want to make sure you have quality content and strong calls-to-action to measure.

    Also, to capture email addresses nothing is easier than putting a signup box on your homepage and explaining to subscribers what type of email marketing they will receive if they sign up.

    Then, deliver on your promise and develop an email marketing program that delivers real value.

    Once you have this permission to communicate with them, nothing works better (or cheaper) to strengthen and deepen these relationships.
  • Posted by Frank Hurtte on 7/12/2006 at 4:25 AM Accepted
    Shannon,
    While you are calling people, why not gather data for later use... for instance their email address?

    If you aren't logging information about the person you are calling, you need to do so.
  • Posted by darcy.moen on 7/12/2006 at 9:34 AM Accepted
    Since you are making maximum effort, I hope you are recording all this information in a contact management system like Vtiger. Reason I say this is, you can fill in missing information like fax number and email address, and record results of your telephone cal, such as Interested, not interested, hot lead, follow up next week, buying! Then you can go back and follow up on others with more efficient and less expensive lower labor communication methods like email and fax lists.

    There are some opensource tools you can use such as Vtiger's built in email campaign tool and its databse of letters per customer. I've come across some low priced email to fax services, which will help you cross the fax cost issue you have.

    One thing I might point out is, you might be coming across as too focused or too determined. While its nice to have such spirit, you might be alienating your potential customers and be perceived as very pushy with your determined sales approach. Those that are not interested, move them to the do not call list, or to a list that could be used for other offers. But keep in mind, every customer has a threshhold for number of sales calls from one individual. Respect those limits.

    As for adding a website tracker, they only show you approximately where your visitors are coming from...not WHO they are. You should use a contact us form to gather contact details from folks who request information. Stats are fine for general information, and finding out which states are showing interest in your web site....but it won;t really help you target your prospecting.

    Sounds like you are doing fine with your limited resources, you really should focus on recording and buiding contact files so you can do follow up to this list when the market cools down.

    Darcy Moen
    Customer Loyalty Network
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