Episode Description:
This is an episode that explores a pet peeve of mine, the failure of follow up. It’s something we’ve all experienced many times where either we really want to buy something and can’t get sales staff to follow up, a service call that goes unanswered with no follow up, and maybe we ourselves have forgotten to follow up with a customer or client. We all make mistakes – let’s discuss it and see if we can unlock some helpful insights!
Action you can take right now:
The goal of this podcast is to provide marketing and service insights, but also to provide actionable items that can occur right away without much thought. This episode explores the importance of following up with leads, and some tools that can help keep track of leads through a sales pipeline.
- Do you have a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system? Are you maximizing it? See if you can implement a lead-scoring and tracking method within your existing CRM to help nurture leads.
- Pick a few leads today and start to build a profile on that customer within their account in a CRM. You could even do this in a simple way as word files in a folder with the customer name or account number.
- What did they buy? What did you discuss? Details of small talk. Imagine how powerful keeping track of this can be 6 months from now? “Hey how did XYZ product serve you at your event back in June?” – this is building STRONG relationships through amazing service.
After-Show Thoughts:
I don’t think we intentionally blow off a lead. No salesperson actively avoids trying to sell to an interested customer. I think leads get lost or fall through the cracks more often than not. Systemizing the sales and lead nurturing process can help to avoid that – especially in larger teams where deals may involve multiple people or move from team to team. Without great lead management systems it’s easy to forget a follow up, miss a follow up date, etc.
Soft leads need the most nurturing to move through the pipeline – and these leads typically require the most follow up but when weeks or months may go by between contacts, building that customer dossier becomes increasingly more important so the details of the deal aren’t lost.
Transcript from Episode 12 of the Marketing and Service with Justin Varuzzo podcast:
So I recently bought a car and as expected, the experience was miserable and it really highlighted to me why it is so important to follow up with every lead.
And in this podcast, it’s going to be all about managing leads, that, and more coming up on the marketing and service.com. Justin Varuzzo here from the marketing and service.com podcast. I wanted to start by sharing a little story about a recent automobile purchase that I just made.
Now purchasing a car is never really been a fun experience for me, but yet it’s the most cool and exciting thing we usually buy. And certainly usually the most second expensive thing after a house. So shouldn’t buying a car, just be an incredible fun and awesome experience. Why does a car dealership make it so miserable? So first I’m going to share this most current story about exactly what happened and why it was not an ideal situation. Uh , and then I’ll jump into some very common situations I’ve seen and I’ve had some limited experience within the car industry way back in the day, when I would help dealers list automobiles on eBay as a business, from what I see not much has really changed from way back then back then the service was I would come in and I would list all of your cars on eBay for a fee per car.
The reason this was a great idea is one. I was a good photographer too . I could do it really fast, but most important was the employee turnover rates. I knew as well as the general manager that whoever was selling the cars today, online was unlikely to be there a few months later, employee turnover is exceptionally high in the automobile industry, and this was one of the biggest selling points.
There are still many services today that offer similar opportunities for dealerships that are used on a regular basis. But that aside I’ll get back to that a little bit later, my wife and I traveled to a dealership about an hour away because we wanted to drive a very specific model car.
When we got to the dealership, we did already know they didn’t have the exact car we were looking for, but they had one, a couple model years newer, and it was the same body style. And essentially the same car is the one we were looking for. It was just quite a bit more expensive with much lower miles, but at the very least, it would give us an idea of what we were looking for upon arriving at the dealership. We were greeted by a nice salesperson who asked where we were in the buying stage right upfront pretty much before anything else. And I was very honest and said, well, you were just beginning this search for a vehicle.
We don’t even know if this is going to be the right car for us, but we just wanted to take one for a spin and see how we like it. Surprisingly, and to my great appreciation, the salesperson quickly grabbed the license plate. The keys to the car asked for a copy of driver’s license and told us to have a good time. Now up to this very moment, this was probably one of the most pleasant experiences I’ve had at a dealership.
Usually there’s 45 minutes of small talk, filling out a long form with every bit of information they could possibly ask about me. What do I do for a living? What are my hobbies on and on and on it goes all before they hand over the keys for a test drive. Now I realize a big part of that might be trying to weed out people who are just there to beat on a new car for the fun of it on a Saturday afternoon. And this is also during COVID. So I think they were less comfortable being in a room for an extended period of time at making the small talk, but it was fantastic to be able to take the car out quietly with my wife and take it for a ride.
Now, even though I told the dealer, I really wasn’t interested in purchasing anything that day. I was pretty surprised when I brought the car back and the sales person had moved on to helping someone else and I returned the keys and he said, can you just bring those plates over to the front desk? And thanks for stopping in, I actually did have some follow-up questions after the test drive, but he didn’t seem at all interested, but in his defense, I did say I had no interest in buying.
So I did leave him with one thing. And I said, we love the car. We’re looking for one, a couple of years older with higher mileage. I know that’s a very specific thing we’re asking for this specific color, this specific mileage and this specific price point. And he said, boy, that’s going to be a tall order. And I said, I understand, but here’s my name and number. If anything comes along, just give me a call because I’m sure we would love to hop on it now in my world, that is considered a really, really strong lead.
When someone says, find this for me and I will buy it because it’s exactly what I’m looking for. That is a very strong lead. So here’s where the story starts to take a turn after this nice test drive experience, we went out to lunch and we were browsing similar model cars online just to see what was out there and what the price points were. We already had a pretty good idea of where we wanted to be and what we wanted to spend. And to my amazement, not only did that dealer have the car that I was looking for, they had three of them on the lot on their own website, three cars in the year I was looking for in the price range I was looking for. And with the mileage I was looking for at this point, it was a little too late to turn around and go back to the dealership. So we just went home. But as soon as I got home, I did send an email to the salesman just saying, “Hey, I saw this on your website. It looks like you have a few of the exact cars I’m looking for. Give me a call. I’d love to get some more information on these.”
The next day I received an email that just said, great. When can you come in to discuss question mark, I respond to the email and I said, I’m actually live about an hour away. So I’m not going to be able to come back in just to discuss this, but I would love to discuss it over the phone. And if we can arrive at a good price , uh, for the right car, I’d be happy to put a deposit to hold it until I can get there next weekend at drive it and finalize the deal. But I do have some questions before going down that route about these vehicles. Can you please give me a call?
So day goes by and then another day, and I’m wondering, wow, this is a really strong lead and they have the car in stock and I’m actually going to be upset if I miss out on this one. So at this point, I’ve almost got it into my head. I’m getting this car and I really want one and now I really want it now.
So I call again and I leave a message just saying, I’m very interested in one of these cars. I’d like to close this deal up and pick it up next week. Can you please give me a call back as soon as possible to my amazement, another 24 hours go by and I don’t receive any phone call at this point, I made contact a third time about this, but this time I called the sales manager and was sent to his voicemail.
I explained the situation that there were a few cars in the lot I was very interested in and that I would like to purchase one and close the deal. But I have not heard back from my salesman for three or four days. Please give me a call back. I would love to purchase this car.
Well, it’ll probably come to no surprise that I didn’t get a call back the next day or the day after, or the day after that. What kind of world are we living in when you go to a car dealership and you’re begging them to buy a car and you’re not getting a call back or an email back, or even a message that says, Hey, I’m busy or I’m on vacation or anything just completely Mia.
This was such a bizarre experience that it turned me off to this particular dealership. So we turned our search elsewhere. So a few days later we find another car that meets our criteria. This one’s quite a bit further away. This car was about two and a half hours away from us, but again, it was exactly what we were looking for. So I visit the dealership’s website and this is a franchise dealership manufacturer dealership, looking at a certified pre-owned vehicle. And I put an inquiry in on the website and I’m going to get into this a little bit more later about how these leads often go so, so bad, but I figured I’d give it a shot.
As a first try. I was excited to hear back less than 45 minutes later, I had a voicemail. I missed the call, but a nice salesperson said they did have this car available. And they’d love to discuss it with me to give them a call at my first opportunity. So I did return his call and we did touch base immediately. We had a great conversation. He gave me an overview of the car, essentially. It was exactly what we’re looking for. The price was fair. I asked for just a little bit of time to discuss it with my wife and make sure it’s exactly what we were looking for. And there was no pressure at all. And we called back a few hours later and decided, yep, this is the one we want.
Let’s do it. And then a day goes by. Then a second day goes by then I get a text message on the third morning. He says, I’m really sorry. The car has sold. Now. I did not put a deposit down that first day, but I wonder, did the car sell that first day or did it sell the second day or the third day was the deal in limbo? Again, just a simple response to said, Hey, I’m really sorry. This car is under contract. Now it looks like it’s going to move and we’re not going to have one available. But if another one comes along, I will let you know.
Fortunately, a few days later, the same salesperson did text me again and say, good news. The deal did not go through the previous people who were interested were not approved for financing. So I still have the car available this time. I immediately called him and said, I would like to give you my credit card number, put a deposit on this car and pick it up this weekend. He said, great. I’ll email you over a sales contract, give it a sign, add your , uh , credit card information, send it back to me. And I will get this processed.
So now things were looking pretty up. We were pretty excited about the whole deal, but I did have questions specifically. I wanted to know what service was done after the car came in and was certified. Did it get new tires to get new brakes? I mean, I realize a certified card meets a certain criteria, but I did want to know some of these details and it should have been easy to get. So after I left the deposit, I did ask if he could send the service records. Uh , and he assured me, this is a certified car. It’s in great shape. Don’t worry.
Now this was not reassuring. You have a service department right there that did all the work. How hard is it to give them a call and say, Hey, can you fax me or email me over the last sales slip for all the work you did on this car? When it was certified, he then quickly texted me a bunch of pictures of the car, but still didn’t directly answer my question.
The more he basically was about answering these questions, the more suspicious I was becoming of the deal. Again, he sent some more pictures of the car, sharing me it’s in the showroom and it’s absolutely beautiful and it’s ready to go.
But again, I said, I’d feel more comfortable if I had some information about what was done specifically, does it have it new tires? Did it get new pads? Did it get new rotors or did they resurface the old rotors?
Not that any of these things were even necessarily a deal breaker, but it was information that I wanted to know about prior to spending a large amount of money on a car that was new to us. Finally, two days later, a day before I was about to travel two and a half hours to finalize this deal, the salesperson did send me the information I had requested. And by that time I did have a few more questions about the car that I, some common things I learned to look for.
When I researched this car online, one was the potential for rust underneath the car. And I asked if there’s any way he could send a picture of underneath the car. Now I know this is not convenient. They’d probably have to put the car on a lift or he could just slide his phone underneath the car and snap a few pictures. I’m not looking for a Ansel Adams style portrait of the bottom of the vehicle. Just an idea as if it’s really rusty. Is it a little rusty or is there no rust ?
Unfortunately, that was the only thing that was not ever followed through with, but I figured if everything else was good, I can check that when I’m there in person, just by sticking my head underneath the car and taking a Gander. So this was a Friday and I wanted to pick up the car Saturday, as we were finalizing all the paperwork and I was putting some money down and I was financing the remainder of the deal. And I made this very clear in my text , the specific amounts that I wanted to put down and the specific amount that I wanted to finance with a loan that was already in place with my bank.
I was told, this is no problem, and everything will be squared away. But then a few hours later, the finance manager calls to finalize the details. And when I tell him this arrangement, he seems confused as if putting money down and financing. Part of a deal is something that’s very unusual, even more unusual. Was it that he found that I had a preapproval from my private bank because of course the financing should have been done through him and his bank. However, I was happy with the rate with my credit union, and it is not at all unusual to do something like this, but this finance person was very, very pushy about the fact that I did something wrong and that he can’t even finalize the deal unless he gets a credit app from me, which of course I refuse to provide because I’d already filled out a credit application with my bank to get the approval for the loan.
I didn’t feel it was necessary to fill it out again. Now what’s even more interesting is my bank had a deal with these franchise dealerships and there were instructions for the dealer on the back of my loan documents. And I had to read these step-by-step directions, which was embarrassing for him as well as for me, for him to follow, to figure out how to access this loan in his system. And he did follow the instructions and eventually he did figure it all out.
Again, this was very surprising from a franchise dealership and I’m not even sure if it was a truthful mistake on their part or a devious act to try to fool me into filling out another credit app so they can grab a few extra points on financing from their lenders. But nonetheless, it was frustrating because now the deal was stretching late into Friday night. And I wasn’t confident that I was going to drive two and a half hours and actually have a car that was ready to go from here on out. Everything went pretty smooth.
The deal did close. We did drive the car home and all was well in the world, but I learned a lot of valuable lessons during this process. And , um , as I do this podcast, I try to think of my interactions and I analyze the interactions I have with businesses a lot more carefully than I ever did in the past. And it made me realize that what this whole story boils down to is follow-up simply put it’s follow-up .
And I’ve heard this from a lot of business owners that they have staff, or they have sales teams that just aren’t good at follow-up . And the problem is, is that follow-up is the key to success in sales. I mean, you have to follow up with leads, especially strong leads. Now there are a million different ways that you can do follow up .
You can literally do something as simple as writing a name and a calendar a week later saying, make sure to follow up. You could use sophisticated CRM tools that will automatically provide you reports for the people you need to follow up on. You could create a lead scoring system where you rate your leads is , uh , and these are, these are systems that can be made up for whatever industry you , you are in or whatever makes sense for you. But let’s say you can rate a lead from zero to 10 or zero to a hundred based on a whole bunch of different factors.
Is this person serious? Are they local? Do they have the financing in place? Do they have the money? And then all of these things, if they meet the criteria, their lead score would be higher and higher and higher. And of course the higher the lead score, the more aggressive pursuing that sales should be.
So this whole car story, when you think about the success of people who develop a frictionless sales process, and I’ve talked about this before on the podcast, a frictionless sales process, Amazon is a frictionless sales process. They save your credit card. It’s a one-click checkout. Now you can just say, Hey, Alexa, get me this and this and this. And it’s done. It is so easy that the convenience starts to outweigh savings.
When you reorder something with Alexa, you’re not looking at it , 12 different websites to see who’s got the cheapest. Maybe Walmart is a dollar less than Amazon, but you don’t even care because it’s so convenient to just say, Hey, Alexa, reorder this item. That is a frictionless process.
There’s very little friction in getting through that process, buying a car. It’s literally the complete opposite of frictionless. It couldn’t be more free , full . If that’s a real word, there is so much friction in the process, every single step. And again, part of me wonders is this strategic.
When you’re purchasing a car, it’s something most people are do every three years or five years, or maybe even every six or seven years. And with the high employee turnover rates, chances are the sales person who sells you your car today. You’re never going to see again. And they know it as well as you. So their interest is to make the most money as possible now, because they know that in four years, they will move on to either a different dealership or a different industry altogether.
But this is something that small business and new businesses can really learn from. For example, Tesla provides a frictionless sales experience. If you know anyone who’s dealt with them, or if you’ve ever purchased a Tesla, you go on their website, you drop a thousand dollars with apple pay and you’re in you get your car on order. They give you a call, you pick it up, you finalize everything and you’re ready to go.
No sales pressure, no commissions. You just sign and drive. That is a frictionless sales experience. And maybe that’s why Tesla stock is soaring right now. And that’s why that company is upending . The automotive industry.
The other thing I wonder is by creating all this friction in the car experience, it makes it absolutely miserable. You should have so much fun when you buy a car, it should be such an enjoyable experience. You should feel relieved and excited. Like anyone you spend money, you buy something. It makes you happy. The process of buying a car should make you happy. Driving off in the car should make you happy.
So why is it so miserable? Part of me wonders if it’s strategic, because they make it so frustrating that you just want the torture to be over. You have to have a vehicle. You have to get from point a to point B. Let’s make this so miserable that the thought of that going to another dealership and going through this charade again, I just will be intolerable. So I don’t care how much it costs. I don’t care how you screw me. I don’t care what extras you add on at the end. I just, I gotta get outta here. I gotta be done with this. And because there’s such high turnover on the sales side, and there’s such low return rates on the customer side, nobody really cares anyway, around now.
I’m sure there’s a few people who care that do depend on loyalty and the people who manage and own these dealerships that rely on customers coming back to their service department and coming back every three years to turn in their lease and lease another car. But they are far and few between.
So let’s talk about follow-up , especially if you are a small business or a business with a sales staff or where sales direct sales is a big part of your business follow up is so, so important. Uh, one thing I like to start with is permission based. Follow-up let’s just take your most basic lead.
You get a soft inquiry, meaning someone just calls and says, Hey, just wondering if you have this in stock or, Hey, I’m wondering if you have it in this color, just a casual tire kicker situation. And you say, yeah, I have that say, okay, great, thanks have a nice day, but you can use permission-based marketing here and you can just say, Hey, listen, I appreciate the call. I do have that. I realize you’re still looking.
You’re not ready to make a decision. Now, do you mind if I follow up with you in a day or two, and again, depending on what this is, maybe a week would be appropriate, maybe two weeks, you know, obviously the , uh, the bigger, the purchase decision, especially if it’s a business to business sales process, where it could be a very large purchase amount, that’s going to take a company weeks or months to research and allocate the resources to close a deal like that. You obviously, you gotta use some common sense if it’s a very low priced item where someone wouldn’t have any apprehension spending the money, then maybe the follow-up is later that day because you want to make sure you get them before someone else gets to them.
But I think you’ll find that most people have no problem. If they’re even casually interested in the thing that they’re calling about or emailing you about. If you ask them upfront, Hey, can I give you a call in a day and just follow up with you? That’s usually not a problem. And they’ll usually grant you that permission. The problem is you actually have to follow up the next day. You can’t be like the car dealer and just ignore the person day after day after day. And I know this sounds like such stupid, common sense, but we’ve all been there. I mean, think about how many times have you called somebody and asked for something, or you said you wanted to buy something. You just don’t hear back. You send an email, you don’t get a response. You make a phone call. You don’t send it. You don’t get a response. You go into a store and say, Hey, I want this. Can you order it for me?
They say, sure, we’ll give you a call. And you just never hear back. This happens all the time. You’ve experienced it yourself all the time. So even though this is stupidly obvious, it’s something you really have to have a handle on in your business. Part of following up on these leads is also following up with accurate information.
This , this is another one that , that blows my mind. And I know that we have all experienced this. Uh , let’s say I call a company and I say, Hey, I’m looking for that black car. I mean , use the car example because that’s fresh on my mind. I’m looking for this car. I’m looking for it in black with a black interior. I’m looking for this year. Please give me a call back as soon as possible. Let’s assume you get the followup the next day. How many times have you gotten the followup where the next day they call and say, oh, hi, thanks for calling. I got your message. So what are you looking for? And then you have to explain everything again , uh , what you left in the message, because either they were too lazy to jot it down, or they didn’t think it was important, or they got the message secondhand from someone else who didn’t think it was important. But Glenn , let’s be honesT, we’ve all been there where you have to reiterate again, what you called for in the first place. And this is what I mean by lead accuracy, take information you have and use that accurately. When you call back that lead or you follow up with that lead, you should have all this information in front of you and say, Hey, I know you called about the black on black car that you were looking at. Guess what? Yeah, we do have it. It’s still here. We’d love to have you come down or we’d love to discuss it over the phone, whatever you gotta do. I mean, I’m not going to go through the whole sale , the process here.
This is just the lead. Follow-up take these things. Think about it, really think about it. Listen to the message. What is this customer asking for? Give them the answers and have the answers ready. If they’re asking for something very, very specific. When you call back, know how much it costs, no , whether or not you have it in stock. Otherwise you’re just following up and you’re not providing any, any insight. You’re not being useful.
Take a minute, do a little research, gather some information on your end before you follow up. And I don’t mean take three or four days to figure it out. I mean, take five minutes before you make the call, jot some notes and know what the hell you’re talking about when you call this person back. Now, he briefly mentioned tools that you can use for follow-up one that I use personally, that , uh , if you’re not familiar with , um, I, I might get into it in another podcast , uh , specifically this product. Uh, but I have been using HubSpot , uh, their free tier. Um, it costs nothing and it is really good for lead management in a small business because it costs nothing. And it gives an overview, especially if you have four or five people on a sales staff, it allows you as the business owner or the marketing manager to ensure that your staff is actually properly following up with leads.
This is done through a combination of a ticketing system and , uh , think of it as a internal email system, but with logging and tracking and auditing of every step of the process. So you’ll know, and you can see, oh, John was supposed to follow up with this customer on such and such a date. You can take a look and see, did this actually happen? Uh, Mary was going to call and schedule another meeting for next week.
Did this happen? Did we schedule the meeting if we did? When is that meeting scheduled for all that information is basically in one repository where anyone on the team and you can set up permissions can see what’s going on in where every deal is in the process of closing it. Now, again, it’s not groundbreaking. It’s not going to change your life. And if you’re really good at follow-up , it may not even help you at all.
But if you have a larger sales team and you have a lot of follow-up that you can’t personally handled each and every single instance of it, this is a great way to get started. Of course, they offer a paid tier where you can integrate your email marketing and your service desk, and anything else that can kind of combine
together. So again, you have that one repository that really follows the entire life cycle and journey of a single customer. And the real value comes after you’ve used it for a while. You start to build this good collection of data, you can see a customer and you can see a lead. You can see everything they’ve purchased before. You can see every person they’ve interacted with before you can see every problem they’ve had before. And kind of like what I said before. Take that five minutes. So you can have the answer to the question.
This is a great way to get to know a customer that you may not know firsthand. Now I know for most of us here are small businesses. It’s probably you or you and a few sales staff. Uh, it’s probably not that big of a deal because you probably know these people by name and you probably remember the issues they’ve had, but it’s always a great idea to recall those things. And , and again, jot them down before you make the call. And then you can just ask some things to be friendly and to provide excellent customer service.
Because again, the stapled, this podcast is really about customer service, but to provide that extra level of service, it’s great. If you call a customer, especially when you haven’t spoken to in a year or two, and you can say, Hey, you know, I was just looking back. I know you bought X, Y or Z two years ago. You had that problem six months later, how is everything working out? Good. No, no issues since people really appreciate that.
They’re like, oh yeah, no, everything came back. It was perfect. No problems. It’s been beautiful ever since, or Hey. Yeah. You know, it’s been a little finicky and I, you know, I wish we could do something and then, Hey, well, you know, I know you’re buying this and this , uh , I can give you 30% off of this part and throw it in with the order. It’ll ship for free some yeah. Again, I , it it’ll change for every industry and for every business, but you get the idea where I’m going with here. It’s about delivering an extra level of service and extraordinary level of service. How do you take it to the next level? Every interaction you need to think to yourself, how do you take it to the next level? You know, if you’ve been listening to this podcast, I’ve talked about how most people can’t recall more than one or two times where they feel they’ve gotten amazing customer service one or two times.
We, we, we engage in hundreds of transactions. It seems a day. You deal with different people. You get your coffee, you get gas in your car. You, you, you’re constantly part of this economy dealing with businesses. And you’re telling me only one or two times in your life, you can think of where you’ve had good customer service. That means that there is still a tremendous opportunity for small business.
You have a tremendous opportunity to take a minute and think about how can you provide an extraordinary level of service. And I can tell you right now, that starts with following up with your leads, even if it’s a bad lead, or it seems like the lead is a waste of time. It make sure it’s a waste of time. Don’t just assume that someone doesn’t meet a demographic or they don’t meet a financial requirement. Make sure get some information that can validate that. I’m not saying I want you to waste five hours on a lead, you know, is not good. But a lot of people are not doing the most basic follow-up or they’re making assumptions, which is the worst thing you can do. You already know it don’t assume things.
Anyone in sales, they all have the same story about the one person they thought looked like they were broken a loser and they could . And that’s the person who ends up being the whale. Who’s the biggest, greatest customer ever, you know, multimillionaire Ray to spend any amount of money with no negotiation, but then ends up going somewhere else because you treated him like a jerk. So just think about that. Really? Think about that.
Follow up with your leads, follow up with your leads. If there’s anything you’re going to take out of this podcast ever for the love of God, follow up with your leads. Do so and do it aggressively. Do it with knowledge. I’m not saying annoy people. If you’re gonna follow up a day later, follow up a day later. If a day later, it’s still uncertain saying , Hey, you know, let me give you a few days. Can, do you mind if I give you a call next week or I’ll shoot you an email or I can just shoot you a text. If you hear nothing a week later, just shoot a text. Hey, just want to follow up with you. See if anything’s changed.
Eventually they are going to say, listen, I don’t want it . Anything from you. I already got what I was looking for. Good. Now, you know that lead is dead. You don’t have to bother that lead anymore. Although you should still follow up a few months later and just say, Hey, I know you purchased something elsewhere. Just want to make sure that all worked out. If anything’s changed, keep me in mind because you never know if they might have to come back for something else. But by having that persistent follow-up and keeping a conversation, I mean, that’s , that’s all, this is really what I’m saying. You gotta keep the conversation going. Just keep the conversation, go just like a casual friend on Facebook. They might say, Hey, to once a month, there’s so many , you work with another department you wave to and say hi, when you’re in the parking lot, treat your customers the same way.
If they’re distant leads, or if they’re dead leads, just keep in touch. There’s nothing wrong with that. Most people don’t mind. Knowns can get angry and if they really do get angry, then they’re probably weren’t going to be a customer in the first place. But, and again, I’m not saying pester him . I’m not saying call someone every day, call and email and drive him nuts, but just, just beeped, just be a human being. Just be nice. A couple of months have gone by since we spoke last everything good life. Good. How’s COVID treat near everyone safe. Your family. Well, these little follow-ups .
Yeah, most of the time someone’s just going to hit delete, especially if you don’t have an ongoing business relationship with them, but it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t keep you top of mind. And I don’t know that you’re gonna find a lot of people who are going to disagree with me here. I mean, maybe we’ll , uh, let me know. Maybe I’m just crazy. Maybe I’m at an out of my mind with this whole thing, but I just, ah , man, I just, I, it , that car buying experience really, really struck me as , uh , uh, it just, it just shined a light on this whole thing of lead follow-up and how important it is. So here’s the irony. Three weeks later, I get a call back from that first dealership saying,
Hey, thanks for the call. I do have a car here for you. And I said, I’m sorry, I have to cut you off. I already bought a car three weeks ago and I’m no longer in the market and I didn’t get an apology. I didn’t get any inquiry about what I bought, nothing that would lead information to help this person secure a sale, maybe a year from now two years from now or three years from now. Just a oh, okay. Thanks. And , and , and hung up the phone. No explanation as to why it took three weeks or where the sales manager was. I mean, just , uh , I mean, I may be , I’ve never been in a business. That’s been that busy with that many new customers that , uh , I could afford to just let a , a good strong lead like that slipped through the cracks. Listen, I know this hasn’t been the most uplifting podcast .
That was a frustrating experience for me. And I’m probably taking that out on everybody a little bit with my attitude towards this whole thing. I have a little disdain for the , uh, for the automotive industry today. But listen, thanks so much for listening. I hope you enjoy this. I do this because I want you to understand the opportunity that’s in front of you. There’s not a lot of opportunities , uh , in today’s world. It feels like anytime you have a good idea, someone’s already doing it, but you know what? They’re just not, I don’t care what anyone says that great customer service . It’s just not true. And you know, it’s not true because you deal with a lot of businesses and you know that very few of them are providing you some extraordinary level of customer service or some extraordinary business relationship.
That’s changing your life. It is really, really super rare. You have the opportunity to make it happen. So get out there, make it happen. Thanks so much for listening. Listen, check out the website, marketing and service.com, marketing and service.com. I’m Justin Bruzzo. I hope you enjoy this. And you can always email me. Shoot me an email. Let me know if you like it. Let me know if you hate it. If you like it certainly subscribe. If you don’t like it, I’m sorry. I can’t provide you more value, but thank you so much for listening. Have a great day.