Customer nurturing will grow your business
By: T.J. Tedesco
For: High Volume Printing
Published: April, 1997

Have you attained "top of mind" position with your customers and best prospects? Do enough key business influencers call you first when job opportunities arise? No matter how good your sales skills are, nurturing principles will help you win more work.

Sales neglect used to mean you weren’t calling on someone. Now it means you aren’t giving useful information. Show you truly care by focusing less on your capabilities and more on your customers’ needs. Become an information clearing house, differentiate yourself and win top of mind position. Grow your business.

Top Of Mind

Face it. In job shop environments, you don’t always know exactly when you’re going to be needed. No matter how many sales calls you and your team makes, you still miss quoting opportunities. Even with your good customers, sometimes you are in the wrong place at the wrong time and don’t get the call. Highly targeted nurturing keeps you in the picture … even when you’re not there.

Customer nurture programs are marketing systems in which key business influencers at targeted companies receive personalized communication at predetermined intervals. Nurturing can be simple. Regularly sending out customized letters to a handful of key business influencers and keeping track on 3x5 cards is nurturing. Nurturing can be more involved. Segmenting key business influencers and developing appropriate communication streams for each group is also nurturing – only more effective.

Design Your Customer Nurture Program

Segment your targeted companies by their current business activity with you. Use groupings such as: "A" customers – your top 20% which contribute 80% of your revenue; "B" customers – existing customers who currently do business with you but have much more potential; and hot prospects. Good customers need to know you care about them. On the other hand, prospects need information about you and the way you think. Occasional customers fall somewhere in between.

Group people by job categories such as: Production; Creative; Sales; Management; etc. Business influencers in different jobs have different informational needs. Hands-on production managers, estimators, designers, buyers, etc., usually appreciate nuts and bolts production-oriented facts distributed every four to six weeks. Hands-off influencers need less specific information less frequently. Contacting them every two to three months is fine.

Put companies into other useful groupings depending on your business mix. Information which appeals to government bureaucrats probably won’t to design agency employees. Also, some of your customers only think of you for one type of work and ignore your other services. For these, gently give appropriate reminders.

How many companies should you nurture? Here are three rules of thumb. First, nurture all your "A" customers, assuming they pay their bills and their work is profitable. Second, select at least as many "B" customers as "A" customers. Third, choose the same number of prospects as the others combined. For example, if you have 25 "A’s", then you should have 25 "B’s" and 50 prospects, giving you a total of 100 nurtured companies.

Some companies have many key business influencers and others only have one. Be prepared to nurture them all. If you select 100 companies and average five influencers per company, you will be nurturing 500 people. For a nurture program of this size, your annual out of pocket costs will be less than a good brochure, a large color trade ad, or a small booth at a major trade show. And it will be far more effective.

For content, consider:

• Old-fashioned "thank you for your business" letters.

• New equipment and capabilities announcements.

• Letters introducing key employee changes.

• Technical trade articles.

• Job specific articles (production, estimating, sales, management, etc.).

• Articles that you or coworkers have had published.

• Clips of your prospects and customers in the news.

• Collateral material (brochures, sell-sheets, etc.).

• Newszines (newsletters on steroids).

• Audio tapes.

• Holiday cards.

• Group faxes.

• E-mail.

Ten More Tips For Nurturing Success

1. Apply a first class stamp. Don’t use bulk mail, a meter machine, or pressure sensitive addressing labels. Anything that smacks of a "marketing program" will defeat the warm touch you’re trying to create. Your primary purpose is to show you care about your recipient.

2. Sign all your own letters. Never have your signature printed or stamped.

3. If you’re sending out a brochure or any other one-message-fits-all (shotgun) piece, personalize it with a Post-It. Your recipient will feel special if she sees a short note from you saying, "Jane, we just produced this. Thinking of you – John." It will take a couple of hours to do the writing, but the results will be worth it.

4. "Introduce" other people at your company by having them "author" some letters. For example, have communications go out under the names of your CSR, president, pre-press guru and press room manager. Your coworkers will be delighted they’re included and your customers will appreciate hearing from the supporting cast.

5. Keep your letters short. Four to eight sentences is usually all you need. You’re going to be in frequent contact with people and it’s better to leave one clear message rather than several fragments. If you can’t say it all now, say it next month.

6. Most Americans read at the sixth to eighth grade level, so write appropriately. Adhere to two "readability" rules of thumb. First, your average sentence length should be 12 words or less. Second, your average word should contain about 5 letters. (For example, this article averages 11.4 words per sentence and 5.1 letters per word.)

7. Go easy on your "call to action." This is contrary to the direct mail mindset, but your purpose is to win top-of-mind position. Unlike direct mail, you’re goal isn’t to get an immediate phone call, donation, or purchase. If your customer doesn’t have a job today, you’re not going to get a call today, no matter how "sharky" your letter is.

8. Keep yourself organized by using a contact manager (i.e., Act 3.0, Goldmine or WinSales), a 3x5 card system (for small nurture programs only), or a database program. On occasion you will need to know what you sent someone and what should come next. A little organization up front will pay dividends later.

9. If you feel uneasy about sending the same basic letter to several people in a company, write two or three versions and alternate the recipients.

10. Know your customers and prospects. Don’t use these suggestions as gospel. Tailor your customer nurture program to fit the needs of your marketplace.

Increase Your SOC (Share Of Customer)

Will there be a tangible result? Yes. Will it happen overnight? No. Most print buyers spread around their work. If you’re typical, you’re probably getting somewhere between 25% and 50% of your "A" customers’ work. With excellent nurturing, you should increase your SOC by at least 10%. Since your "A" customers usually account for 80% of your revenue, a mature territory should increase at least 8%. And this doesn’t even include additional revenue from "B" customers and top prospects!

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Successful printers understand that they build relationships. Event sales businesses like boats, Jacuzzis, real estate, and cemetery plots (everyone’s a prospect … once) are different from printing because they emphasize "the close" more than we do. For us, winning a print job is just the first step. Building ongoing rapport and trust is the real goal. We need long term relationships to be successful. A well-planned nurture program can help us win more customers and grow our business.

T.J. Tedesco is a “hands-on” marketing, sales, coaching and training consultant to the post press industry. He is the author of Binding, Finishing & Mailing: The Final Word, and Win Top-of-Mind Positioning, both published by GATFPress and available at Amazon.com. T.J. can be reached at (301) 294-9900 or tj@growsales.com.