Nurturing potential customers

From many years of marketing experience, I can tell you that when a customer says “no thank you”, a lot of the time what they are actually saying is “not just yet”.  It’s easy to discard a prospective customer when they tell you “no” the first time you deal with them, but often it’s just that now isn’t the right time or they haven’t gone through their full decision-making process yet.  That might be because of something in their life that means they are not ready to buy, or it might be that they just haven’t got to know you.  They will give it a pass this time, but by the time the next opportunity to talk comes around things might be different – so don’t write them off just yet.

Let’s take a look at some examples of what I mean by this, going back to the reasons that people don’t buy:

Someone has NO NEED for your product now, but what if their current supplier lets them down, or what if the product they are currently using breaks?  That can quickly go from ‘no need’ to ‘I need now!!’.  Have you been memorable enough, or kept in touch with them somehow, so that it be you that they call?

Someone has NO MONEY, but what if they have a birthday, or win a new contract, or get a bonus from work?  Have you made sure that you are still engaged with this customer so that when they do have money, your product is the top thing on their list to spend it on?

Someone has NO TRUST in your business or product, but can you build that trust over time?  Can you drip-feed them with new information, case studies, testimonials from happy customers, details of awards your product has won or examples of how you handle returns?  If you do, there will be a moment when ‘no trust’ becomes ‘trust enough to try’.

A large part of your future sales will come from customers who originally said “no thank you”.  What do we say to make the sales assistant in a shop go away when we’re not ready to buy yet?  “No thanks, just browsing.”  The reality is that you may have come into the shop to buy, but you’re not ready to make a purchase right this second so please go away and leave me alone until I know what I want.  You need time to look around and compare, or you might even go away and come back next week when payday comes around.  Your “no thanks” doesn’t mean that you don’t want to buy.