Consider yourself for a moment. The first time you saw either of our sites at 5000bc or Psychotactics, did you buy anything? Yeah, sure, so you signed up for a free newsletter. But did you buy?
You couldn't or wouldn't because of the six degrees
In all our testing, all our measurements and weird tracking, we've found one consistency. That customers almost never buy on the first time around. That somehow there are several degrees of separation. Somehow this magical figure sits at six. These six degrees prevent zee customers from getting experiencing your superfragilisticexpealidocous consulting or your wunderbar products.
But how do you contact customers six times without annoying them?
Yeah. Good question. I mean not every customer of yours is on some mailing list somewhere. Mailing lists are darn easy. You just keep sending out a newsletter asking the customer to buy, and about six newsletters later they buy into your offer. But what about a CEO of a company?
That CEO ain't reading your newsletter…
So you've got to use systems that are conventional, but still keep you top of mind. Here's a series of steps you could possibly take, to ensure a steady contact.
Zee six points of contact
Point Uno: Meeting with your client
Point Two: Send a thank you card
Point Trois: Send a printed newsletter of your article
Point Four: Send a birthday card (What? You don't have that information?)
Point Cinqo: Send information of a new product/service
Point Six: Send another article — again printed
Sounds like hard work, doesn't it?
Yes, it's darn hard work. Online it's much easier to put someone on a list and keep reminding that person of your abilities through a sequential set of newsletters. Offline, you require a whole more effort to keep in touch with a client. If you don't put down a series of steps in your diary/planner, you've wasted your time.
If you can't do step six, don't do step one…
You're on a date, for crying out loud! You've got to have the flowers, the candy, the movies, the dinner, the candle. What works is not the ‘Hey, I'm the greatest.' What really gets a client's interest, is your persistence and your ability to pique that interest with a combination of sales pitches and expertise through educational material.
The six secrets of selling are simple
1) Follow up
2) Follow up
3) Follow up
4) Follow up
5) Follow up
6) Follow up
Personal Experience: When we used to meet clients in our ex-consulting practice, we used to head back to the office and chart out the six steps. We'd put it in the diary and make sure it got done. If you don't believe me, call some of our clients. They STILL have the Thank You card we sent them two or three years ago.
Online, you know how relentlessly we follow up. Even so, it takes several follow ups before we can get a customer's undivided attention. Customers routinely take about 6 months to buy the Brain Audit or the membership to 5000bc. It's normal. We know we have to keep doing the romancing. We have to be consistent and eventually, as a customer you can see we're serious. That persistence alone gets you to say YES.
And that's conversion. There's the whole topic of retention. Which as you can guess, is a whole new ball game altogether.
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Interestingly, most of my sales occur on the first visit (unless Google Analytics is telling me wrong). I do have a high percentage of repeat customers, though. I’m selling children’s books so maybe it’s different for this type of application?
what an awesome article! I was surprised to seem myself in that six months… or about there (actually closer to ten for me…before I bought the brain audit). gives me a great standard to set for myself and target for my own marketing and sales.
thanks!
If a potential customer sees your company’s advertisment in a magazine or blog, does that count as a point of contact?
Some of us take even longer!
‘Cos some marketers are more aspirational than intentional.
(‘One day, when I get to be truly tremendous, I’m going to buy one of those…’ and it has NOTHING to do with price but a lot to do with self-perception.)
Actually, the answer is (like so many things) “it depends.” I actually talk in my book Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First about how to bring the six or seven impressions down to just one by laser targeting the intersections of prospect’s need/desire, frequency, and message. In other words, if you make exactly the right offer to the right person at the right time, you may only need one impression. If you have something that’s just not of interest, no amount of impression will shift. Example: as a 36-year vegetarian, I am not motivated to buy anyone’s burger by any amount of marketing. Only a sudden and very urgent need (like genuine starvation in a prison cell somewhere where meat was the only available alternative) would move me into the customer zone.
Do you find that the number of “degrees of separation” is related to the price of the product or service? The more expensive items require more “romancing” to get the sale.
what I would like to add to your article is that you forgot about “word of mouth” customers.
for example I recommended the Brain Audit to some friends some time ago and almost all who were interested in taking marketing to the next level bought it. You could say it was a 90% conversion on the first visit.
from my experience “word of mouth” beats follow up, or you could say it’s the follow up that your customers do for you.