What are Fast Deals
In many industries, there is an “optimized” interaction between buyers and sellers:
- The buyer sends a request.
- The seller proposes a price and, if everything suits him, makes the payment.
- Deal completed!
These are the so-called “transactional transactions” , when only a specific task is discussed with the client, and the idea of ​​long-term cooperation is not taken into account. The main thing in such deals is to sell quickly! Oral communication is minimized!
This is an established practice in many industries. This is how they work in many B2B industries with standard products, for example, when selling measuring equipment, fasteners and hardware, etc. Some even take pride in organizing this process until they look at the repeat sales statistics. The results are sad: the majority of customers only buy once. Due to the lack of contact with the client, it is rare to organize outbound activity. And since there are no Repeat sales, hence the low profitability of the business and high dependence on advertising.
Why this happens, and what can be changed, we will tell in this article.
Why companies with fast deals have few repeat sales
The peculiarity of fast sales is that the key task of the seller is to promptly process the request and send an offer to the client.
Most are convinced that the “right price” and “billing speed” will completely determine the success of the trade. Therefore, the sellers clarify the request, send the invoice to the customer by mail and wait for the result. Salespeople focus their efforts on pushing internal suppliers to get a good price for themselves and pay little attention to post-invoicing customer service.
It turns out that, striving to serve the client faster and with minimal costs, we are good at solving the problem of “quick sales with minimal effort,” but we do not see the other side of the coin - the inability to resell to our client base.
Without establishing personal contact with the client and not having sufficient information, it becomes difficult to turn to the client again with an offer that is relevant and useful for him.
There is no understanding of how to establish long-term relationships and lead to repeat sales, because the client did not really communicate with the first purchase. Most of our clients are no different from those whom we do not know and who do not know us.
It turns out that it is very difficult to organize repeated sales in such a company. There are many sales, but there is no one to call again!
Since express communications often take place by e-mail, it turns out that both the seller and the CRM system do not have the customer's phone number, only his name and mail. You cannot organize active sales by email alone!
So it turns out that with such a model of interaction, neither the seller nor the company is interested in the information necessary for long-term cooperation. For example, information about the industry, location, number of branches and employees, preferences of the decision maker. As a result, after the completion of the transaction, both parties forget about each other, switching to new transactions.
What needs to be changed?
One small change will allow you to maintain a high rate of processing and enable repeat sales.
Here's what to do: transfer the maximum number of communications from email to instant messengers!
Let's see how this can help!
From mail to messengers
In recent years, businesses have gradually started to “move” to messengers. It is increasingly difficult to leave work at work. Now, in the messenger, most buyers, in addition to personal communication, have working interactions in parallel.
If earlier it was impossible to submit a request to “send an invoice to WhatsApp”, now it is becoming the norm. In many industries, Messengers are already a more effective channel for customer interaction. We need to expand this practice.
Working through Telegram, for example, on the one hand, you remain in the old model - you sent an invoice and wait for an answer, on the other hand, you have a lot of opportunities for organizing repeat sales through an established channel! Unlike mail, where the openness of messages in mailings is 1-2%, in instant messengers the indicator reaches 80%. And if you send an offer to an existing chat, then even higher!
What do you need to move to Messengers?
Moving to Messengers
So, we decided that we need to change the sales process so that from the first deal you stay on the client's phone!
The task now is as follows: in the first transaction, not only to process the client's request as quickly as possible, but also to catch on to the “client's phone number”, to start building long-term relationships.
And the first step is to get into the contact list. And there are several possibilities for this:
- Communication through instant messengers.
- Sending an invoice to instant messengers.
- Informing about the process of preparation and readiness of the order in messengers.
- Satisfaction assessment and organization of warranty service.
Any of the above actions is available for most CRM systems and 1C. If you wish, you can easily implement this functionality, the main thing is to see a deep meaning in the transition from one-time deals to repeat sales!
An example of organizing repeat sales based on a real case
Let's consider a situation based on a real company, in which the interaction with the client took place in the format of transactional transactions. The company is engaged in the sale of measuring equipment. The organization is focused on customer focus, i.e. tried to satisfy the needs of clients as quickly as possible.
The management decided to develop the direction of repeat sales. Six months after the decision was made, this company contacted us in order to competently organize repeated calls for the accumulated client base. There was a problem of low repeat sales conversion, it was almost impossible to see the customer's footprint. In 50% of cases, the customer's phone number was missing in the CRM system. When new offers were sent to the mail, letters often ended up in spam. Analyzing the problem, we realized that the situation is quite common in the market and proposed the following plan:
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- Transition of interaction to instant messengers.
- It is obligatory to enter customer information into CRM.
As soon as the company began to act according to the above three steps, a real base of living people began to accumulate, with whom it was possible to build interaction, communicate and plan the following actions. The next step for the sales department was to conduct a satisfaction assessment: what was good, what was bad, what was pleasant and disliked. With those who gave good marks, we continued to interact, asking what else we can be useful. Negative reviews were helpful feedback and an opportunity for growth. Often, after the completion of the first transaction, the client did not need anything else from the company, however, maintaining pleasant communication, after 6-12 months they returned to the company again with new orders.
Also, in the process of collecting the contact base, it became possible to send insulating mailings to clients.
This company contacted us only this year, so it is difficult to provide results from the implementation of the repeat sales direction. According to our calculations, a 5% increase in PP conversion should increase revenue by 20%, and profits will also grow significantly, because customer retention is cheaper than attracting new ones.