How To Improve Your Business Follow Up Game: Steve - Flawless Followup

This is the Beyond the Story podcast, a show that goes way beyond the story. And now Sebastian Frost.

Steve. Welcome to the show, hey Sebastian thanks for having me here, buddy.

Hey, it's great to have you here. Long time no see. At least a couple weeks it is. It is so. You and I met on the Modern Prophets Mastermind cruise a couple weeks ago. Heck of a way to spend a week, let me tell you out, toodling around the Caribbean or at least it felt that way and hanging out with some like-minded individuals. You and I got the opportunity to share some of our knowledge on a couple of the days of the cruise, but it was just an all-around good time. I think you know this whole idea around events in the 21st century, nobody really wants to go to a hotel and be shacked up in a conference in a convention room for three days just to hang out at the hotel bar, maybe have dinner. I think we're looking for more of an experience and, my goodness, we sure had that, didn't we?

You know, yeah, great experiences and there's no better way to bond. You know, I was at the as soon as we got off the cruise ship I went to another event. It was about 300 people's in a hotel. I loved their great event, great knowledge, great everything. But I didn't leave there with relationships that I met by being on a cruise, for, you know, four days and you know the closeness, the bonding, the excursions. It was awesome If you got to work that's the way to work.

It totally is. It absolutely is Looking forward to the next one next year, that is for sure. So for context, let's back up a little bit. I want to help our listeners better understand a little bit more about you and your backstory and what really brought you into present day with what you got going on, with Flawless Followup.

I appreciate that. Thanks so much, sebastian. Yeah, I'm the founder of a company called Flawless Followup and I'm known as the original followup expert, or specialist, and it really is something that my entire professional career has led to. I was a sales guy in the corporate world for three decades and early on in my sales career I stumbled upon a huge sale and you know it really amounted to me being lucky. I was in the right place at the right time and I got a sale and I thought I was a great salesman. You know as young I was cocky and got this great sale basically my first call. But I realized right as time went on, I wasn't necessarily the world's greatest salesman, that I thought that I was, and it was all about being at the right place at the right time with the right message. And you know what the reality is. When you follow up with your customers, you have a huge advantage because they already know, like and trust you. You already have top of mind presence and so you're going to be at the right place at the right time with the right message. As long as you do what? As long as you follow up. But most companies they kind of skip that part. They just want to go after new customer, new customer, new customer, and that's a slow process, an expensive process and a risky process.

So, before the follow-up days and the world of follow-up what shifted? Where did you get your start?

In sales. I graduated from school in the mid-80s and my first job was with the Samsonite luggage company and they trained me in sales. And it so happened that the person that I worked with I was a trainee. The sales person I was assigned to was in the mid-80s and the guy was into computers. He was into Macintosh Plus and he taught me not only sales but he taught me how to manage customers and get the maximum revenue per customer. And I wasn't really a computer guy at that point, but I took to the process and I loved it. And what I did learn was that sales is a process. It's not just about talking good, it's not about selling ice to the Eskimos. It's a process, and if you put that process in place, you could grow your sales. And so I've always leveraged technology since those early days. I learned that you could use that technology to make your process better, faster, cheaper, more reliable, and I've always leveraged technology to sell more stuff, and that's what I'm still doing four decades later. You just advanced the whole lot since then.

Yeah, it certainly has, and continues to almost on an hourly basis, thank goodness, yes, making life just that much easier. So when we talk about the follow-up game and you and I were chatting about this a little bit before the episode what do business owners miss when follow-up is not part of the equation?

Great, question, sebastian, great question. You could listen to me or you could listen to people like Harvard Business Review or Bain Capital that put out studies there. Getting customers to come back and buy again is better, faster and cheaper and is immensely more profitable. A small, small increase in customer retention can improve your profits by up to 95%. That's straight from the Harvard Business Review. Past customers that come back to buy again. Not only do they buy quicker and faster, but they spend more money with you. They're more likely to try stuff and, of course, they're more likely to give you that all-important word of mouth. We all know word of mouth is the best advertising there is. Well, who spreads that word of mouth? It's past customers. So you have to follow up with them and not leave it to chance. So if you put these processes in place, you grow sales very, very quickly. So let's talk about some of these processes. Yeah, so my favorite is something I call a win-back strategy for winning back past customers, clients, patients. It's the first thing I do, it's where I start with all my new clients and it's simply what's also known as a customer reactivation campaign. It's simply going back out to the people you're already connected to past customers hey, we miss you. We'd love to do business with you again. Can we interest you on a special offer? When we do that, we get immediate response. When I say immediate, I've got a video where I have 49 seconds sent out our first text message and 49 seconds later somebody said yeah, I want that 49 seconds. So it is a quick, quick way to get more sales, get that cash register ringing and to wake up past customers that are sleeping. But they're right under your nose. And for most businesses I'm going to say all businesses they already have these connections. Many of them don't realize it. Many of them don't realize it. One of the first things we have to do is help them gather them together, because in today's world, businesses are sitting on so much data. But the data could be spread out all over the place. It could be in your QuickBooks, your accounting program, it could be in your CRM, it could be in your point of sale system. So one of the first things we can help them do is get all that data together and put together a quick win-back campaign. So one of the first things that I like to do with clients and really it's never failed me, it's always been successful.

And when you say win-back campaign, that's essentially winning back past customers and people that are on your list, in your database, et cetera, absolutely. And when you, a lot of people would say, well, we really don't have a CRM or some sort of database you mentioned earlier. You have a list, you just don't know about it?

Absolutely, it's one of the very first things I do in the work with clients is we help you get that together. You've got it and we've got a checklist of about two different places that. You've got data, you're sitting on it and I'll tell you a story. Do we have time for me to tell you a quick story? Absolutely. So one of my clients and a personal friend owned a pizza restaurant, all right, and he says hey, you know what? We don't in the middle of the week? We don't. We don't sell as many pizzas at dinner time as I'd like to. I said, well, I can get you more sales tonight. I'm sorry, I don't know. I'm getting notifications here. I hope it's not bothering things. No, you're good. I said I can get you sales tonight. He said, nah. I said, sure, I sure. Let's just send out a message. Let's give some people an offer. What would be a good offer? He says, well, my cannoli is outstanding. How about if we give away a couple of cannoli with a free pizza? I said that sounds, that sounds fun. Let's do that. So he says well, how are we going to send out this message? And and, by the way, this was a few years ago, before we were doing text messaging on a regular basis. Text messaging is wonderfully effective for for for WinBax, but this one was by email. I said well, let's just send out an email to all your customers. Where's your, your, your email list? I don't have an email list. I said, dan, I know you have an email list because I ordered a pizza from you last week and I ordered it online and I gave you my email address and I gave you my phone number and I gave you my address. He said, oh, but that's in a different program. That's in my. That's on my online app, my ordering app. I said so, you've got customers in that app. I said why don't we just get them out of that app and put them in your email marketing program? He said can you do that? So we open up his online ordering app. Guess what? 3,000 past customers. Wow, he had data. He didn't think he had the data. I don't have the email list, but he did. So that's how we helped him. And guess what? He sold pizzas at night, you know. So we. That's how fast we get the response.

You know, we just don't know what we don't know, especially as business owners local business owners, small business owners, service-based business owners where there's always something happening and going on and employees and payroll and customers and challenges it can become an afterthought to say, hey, you know what we need to stay on top of the customers that have brought our business to where it's at right now. Number one, because that's great customer service, the way a business should be ran. But number two, making sure that we're continuing to serve them at our highest capacity, whatever way that looks. And I think that is a highly overlooked strategy for businesses Because, again, you know, I was at a meetup for a mastermind on part of a couple months back and the topic was all around finances and profit and law and reading your P and L consistently as your business. You would be amazed the amount of people in that room that did not even have a P and L and we're operating their books on an Excel spreadsheet, which is absolutely terrifying. We've all been there at one point in time. I've been that person too. But once you continue to evolve your business and make sure that you are firing on every cylinder that you need to, you're no longer negligent in areas anymore because you understand and realize the power behind making sure you've got all of your ducks in a row with your business. Has that been some of your experience? Once you bring people into the follow-up promise land?

Here's Sebastian, and you know what you said was brilliant. You really hit the nail on the head. Okay, you said okay, we've all been there, we've all been the person that didn't have a P and L statement. But look, once you set that up right, you probably set that up in an accounting program. Now, every single month, all you have to do is push a button and the P and L statement is there, right. There's no manual effort. It's automating the process, and that's the same thing we do with businesses. If you try to do this by yourself, as a human, you're going to fail. It's just impossible to keep up with all the moving pieces. You have to have these automated systems in place. That's what we do with flawless follow-up.

Amazing, love it. So if somebody's listening to this right now and they're like wait a second, I need this, of course I do. Every business needs this. I need to find out more. What are some of the first things someone does in addition to reaching out to you?

Well, why don't you go to flawlessfollowupcom? And in fact I'll tell you what? We'll put up a special page for you, Sebastian. We'll call it flawlessfollowupcom, beyond the story, and I'll put together some information there, some things that will really help any business get started.

Amazing. I absolutely love that. What are you excited for for 2024? That's a lot of fours in one question there.

You know what? We're at the tip of the iceberg man. I've been helping businesses with this ever since I started my own business about 13 years ago, once I got liberated from the corporate world which means I got fired but then I started helping businesses with this, and even 13 years ago I pointed out that small businesses and small businesses are who I like to work with. I'm very passionate about helping small businesses, and most of them don't realize what you said. They don't know what they don't know. They don't recognize that they're leaving so much money on the table. They go to bed at night worrying about cash flow, and they don't have to because there's so much that they could bring in right away. And so I'm just as technology brings the world closer and closer, and I literally have clients and people that I've worked with directly or they've read my books or taken my courses literally 155 different countries and you know what I'm finding. People are people everywhere, and so what I'm really excited about for 2024 and beyond is just helping more customers, more small businesses, recognize that revenue and stop leaving it on the table.

Love it, love it. I was going to ask you for any final thoughts on follow-up, but I think I will anyway. That was a great sentiment on final thoughts, but I do want to know your final thoughts for our listeners on why follow-up is absolutely crucial and vital for their business.

Because customer retention is better, faster, cheaper than new customer acquisition. Most businesses out there they're spending money on advertising, they're spending money on lead generation, they're spending money on SEO and social media, and you should do that. Just understand that getting a past customer to come back is going to be much easier and much quicker. So do it in conjunction with what you're already doing, because you're leaving money on the table or, worse, you're sending money to your competition. So stop doing that.

Now those are some final thoughts right there. If you're not following up, you should be. All of the links that Steve mentioned and information that you want to know more about follows, follow-up and what Steve has going on will be available in the description of this podcast episode, so be sure to check them out. Steve, great to see you again. My brother was great to hang out for a week at sea. Look forward to doing that again sometime soon. At the time we're recording this, it's the day before Turkey Day, so I'm going to go ahead and wish you a happy Thanksgiving and I would say, don't eat too much, but we're all going to do that.

That's right, Sebastian.

Hey, buddy, thank you so much. Thank you, steve. I really appreciate it. It's my pleasure. Bye-bye, until next time. Friends, thanks so much for tuning into this episode of the Beyond the Story podcast. Be sure to appreciate it. If you haven't done so already, make sure you're subscribed to the show. This way, you'll get updates as new episodes become available. If you feel so inclined, please leave us a review. Be sure to appreciate it. Signing off from the podcast launchlabcom studios. We'll talk to you next time.