As you may know, there are just three ways to increase the profits of your business: Get more clients, Increase the amount of money your customers spend on their purchase or Increase the times they buy from you.
Of these, the third way – Having your clients increase how often they buy from you is the easiest.
Getting past clients purchase again is 10 times easier (and cheaper) than going out and getting a new client.
Think about the services you provide, are their any things that should be done on a regular basis? For example, lawn care companies can send early reminders about mowing schedules, leaf cleanup, etc., Bookkeepers can send out quarterly reminders to clients to send out their quarterly income tax payments, etc.
Real life example:
One of my carpet cleaning clients sends out postcards annually to remind his clients that it’s time for them to have their carpets cleaned again. He gets a great deal of repeat business from this. And to make it easier, he’s set up a foolproof system to make it easy for him to remind them.
As he’s filing out the paperwork for the receipt for the client, he has a pre-stamped postcard that he fills out with the date of this service. He then files the postcard in a folder for next year, one month prior to the annual service date. At the beginning of the month, he pulls all the postcards in the folder (from last year’s service calls) and drops them in the mail.
Your “To Do” item for the week: List out 1 or 2 services you provide for your clients on a routine basis. Set up a system that will allow you to easily remind them to contact you to set up an appointment to follow up.
Use the example system that my client has set up. You can set up a file box with a folder for each month for the next year, then drop the pre-stamped postcards in. At the beginning of each month, just mail out the pre-made postcards. (You can get simple, inexpensive postcards made up at Vistaprint.com for under $30 where you can customize with areas to fill in the service date and the clients’ address.)
Another option is to create an email template with a reminder notice. Then create reminders in your calendar to follow up with your past clients on the designated day. All you have to do is pull up your email template, fill out the name/email address and hit send!
Share your comments below: Do you have a good follow up system in place to attract repeat business? What has worked for you? Do you struggle getting people back in the door so-to-speak? Let me know below.
Wife, mom to 3 boys, dark chocolate lover, entrepreneur, marketing strategist/web developer and author of Online Marketing Simplified:
The Beginner’s Guide to Using the Internet to Market Your Local Business 
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