I, like many of you, am often in email purgatory. My inbox “overflowith” with staff questions & updates, client requests & questions, personal email, industry news, social media requests & updates, junk mail, etc, etc. And mixed in with this daily storm of emails are the occasional inquiries from referrals, or our website. I must admit, I’ve far too often led off a reply with an apology for the delay in getting back to people. It’s a modern & common problem – but – as professional services providers we simply can’t delay getting back to people on important matters, and what’s more important (other than existing client service of course) than an inquiry from a potential client/prospect?
The fact is, that once a prospect has overcome their fear of the unknown, and gone to the trouble to make contact with you, via email or phone he/she wants and frankly expects a timely reply. How quickly you return calls & emails to prospective clients or to those who have made inquiries regarding your services, says a lot about you and your business. The more professional, and faster the response, the more likely potential clients will feel confident they’ve reached out to the right person for help.
We need to recognize that prospects have a bunch of choices available to them. Even if they are referred to you, they will very likely look you up on the internet, and assuming they don’t have a hard time finding you, once they’ve left/sent you a message – they are still left sitting and waiting with whatever the problem is they contacted you to help them solve in the first place.
While they are waiting for you to respond, can you guess what they’re going to be doing? They are going to be checking out your competitors, of course. Think about it – when a prospect types in your name and profession into a search engine, they are going to get page after page of results – and many if not most of those results will be links to your competitors. It is then extremely easy for them to click and take a look at others who provide the same or similar service as you do.
Since slow response can cost you money, remember – people want help NOW to solve their problem, and in the fast paced world we live in, we can assume they have very little patience and lots of choice, so be quick to respond to prospect inquiries and land the client!!
 | Mark Bullock Telephone: (631) 754-0800 Email: Mark@phoneBlogger.net Website:phoneBlogger.net |
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