Okay now I have your attention, I obviously don't mean touch your customers physically, you'll just end up with a criminal record! I'd prefer that didn't happen!
How to convert more quotes to customers
What I mean is, the more contact you have with your potential customer the more likely they are to use you for the job, you'll show that you give a better service and care about them.
If this is you and it more than likely is, as this is what the majority of business owners do, I'll guarantee you're losing money and in more ways than one.
How much contact can you have?
The more contact you have the better, It'll keep you in your customers mind. After you've sent a quote out there are points you contact the customer to get to the front of their mind.
Your first call should be to make contact to see if they got the quote and this should be done within 24 to 48 hours of sending it.
If you send your quotes out via email you can use email tracking to see when the potential customer has opened the email, then you know you can call them, if you use gmail you can use YesWare which tells you when the email has been opened or any links clicked on.
I have sent quotes out before and they had not been received because either it got lost in the post or I'd got the email wrong, so it's really important that you do this if just to check!
Your second call if they have not already asked you to go ahead with the work or had a look at your quote properly will be to see if they have any questions and this should be done around 48 hours after the first call.
Your next point of contact (should you not get the work) should be to send a card to say thanks for giving you the opportunity to quote and should they need your services in the future you hope they will think of you (If you do this, they certainly will)
Get marketing information
If you've not won the work it's a great idea to find out why, if you find that the reason reoccurs often, then you can change your approach for futures quotes.
If it's price then you can be sure that the customer hasn't seen what value you offer, you can then work on ways to make sure future customers will!
If you get in early enough, you could even ask for a copy of a competitors quote to see if you could match or beat it, by getting a copy of the quote you also get to see how your competitor quotes and if they do anything that stands out that you could incorporate into the way you work! If you don't call though you won't get any information.
Keeping in contact with past customers
It's also important to keep in touch with customers you have done work for, this may be through a newsletter, Christmas card or just a call to make sure everything is okay.
I wrote more about this in the post How trades people and property businesses throw money away
To your success
Paul
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