Is no one hungry anymore?

[Shepherd]

I can't count the number of businesses I have tried to purchase a product or service from over the last year that I have received no followup from. Is everyone making so much money that they no longer need any new business? I contacted a national website in November of last year regarding advertising on their site (their main source of revenue on the site), talked about what they offered and told them we wanted to start advertising the beginning of January, it's January 23rd and I've not heard a thing from them.

I talked to a major SEO company a few months back, discussed over the phone what we wanted to do, rep said he was going to email more information, 30 minutes later he emailed a service agreement/invoice (which did not reflect what we talked about but that's a different story) and nothing else. Been 2 months since that email and have not heard anything else from them.

If they're not going to try to get my business what does that say about the kind of service I would get if I did hire them? These are US based businesses, I've got sub-contractors from Pakistan and India that I haven't used in years that still email and call looking for business regularly.

[bhonda]

They're just playing hard to get.

[wheel]

I have recently implemented vtiger(a sugar clone) in our business to make sure this never happens. I intend to wring every last bit of business out of every contact that comes into my business. Anyone in this business should know the sales funnel, and how increasing conversions is probably the easiest way to increase sales.

If you contact me, you go into the database. I take notes on our conversation and then I ask you for a specific followup date. That triggers a followup phone call in the calendar.

Then every day I sort by calendar, and call back everyone listed for that day.

If I don't get through, the followup call automatically rolls over to the next day. If I don't get through after trying every day for a week or so...(I almost can't believe I'm saying this publicly), the call goes into a 90 day followup. The 90 day followup is magical. In our business, and I suspect in others, clients do their research today. Then they sit on it and in 90 days they make their purchase decision. 90 day followups are an excellent source of sales, using nothing other than contacts that you'd think were useless. Closing rate on them is about the same as brand new qualified contacts.

So if you contact me, expect to receive the impression that I am still hungry and willing to compete for your business. And the calls may sound burdensome, but I get thanked repeatedly for being persistent - people are just busy and are happy to leave it up to me to chase them instead of the other way around.

Nevertheless, my competitors don't seem as hungry. I repeatedly hear back that clients have spoken to my competitors and either never heard a response from their web form request, or they spoke to them and then never called back, or it took them three days to call.

Not so with me. If you do a request for contact through my site, my goal is to call you while you're still sitting at the computer looking at my site. That's another comment I receive regularly - "Oh, that was fast". yes it was, there's no need for you to click back to Google and click on my competitor's site. I'm here now, you're done looking.

But this is all good. Long recessions/depressions thin the herd of weak competitors. When this financial slump is over, expect to be back better than ever, with a surge of business and not nearly as much competition.

[Shepherd]

I think you and I come from a different time Wheel! I was the same way back when I was in the real estate business, follow up for business was as much a part of life as breathing for myself and my agents/employees.

[wheel]

Perhaps. I take the attitude that I am actively interested in having you send me your money.

I read an article in our local paper a year or two ago about a woman with a home based business (as is ours). I think she was running a travel agency. She was quoted as saying that if the phone rang, she answered it. There were no 9-5 hours. I've taken that comment to heart and we answer our phone whenever I hear it ring. Evenings. Weekends. Lunchtime. Doesn't matter, my job is to be at the convenience of my clients and my potential clients. People are too busy to be chasing me so they can send me their money.