Your marketing's working, but your follow-up stinks

Not a day goes by where I don't notice missed opportunities in marketing. Over the past three weeks, my husband and I have had six companies come in to assess some issues we're having with our crawl space and excessive moisture levels in our home. When it comes to choosing what companies we might want to talk to, I picked them based on seeing their marketing -- advertisements in community magazines or direct mail sent. In my line of work I save every piece of direct mail I receive, so I usually turn to my "pile" to pull contractors. I then look them up on Angie's list to see their reviews, volume of business and published estimates from past clients with a similar scope of work.

Normally I don't call in six companies for estimates, but this time we were receiving conflicting approaches and we really needed more advice before moving forward and spending thousands of dollars. All of these people spent between one and two hours at our home in order to investigate our problem. Five of the companies were leading crawl space remediation companies, and the other was an HVAC company -- a company we just spent 10k with just over a year ago when we replaced both AC units and furnace.

About half the companies provided written estimates on the spot. The others did more of a wishy- washy verbal dance and either left things open, or told me they'd send me an invoice.

The companies I called all had spent money on marketing and direct mail. Their efforts were successful, as they scored a response and a lead. The industry standard used in direct mail to calculate ROI on direct mail indicates that 50% of all responses will lead to a sale. You've sent your direct mail. A prospective customer calls you. Now what?

Out of the six companies, we only had ONE follow-up with a phone call. I even followed up with one company (where the owner met with me), and sent him an e-mail apologizing that my husband was out of town and we hadn't had time to talk and make a decision. He didn't respond back at all, even when I reached out first. Some may wonder what the big fuss is about following up if you provided a written quote. Following up does two things: 1) it makes your prospect feel valued 2) it shows that you are so confident enough in what you're selling or your capabilities that we need to choose you.

Now we're stuck. The only one who followed up was the only one we had ruled out entirely. We're having a hard time wanting to spend money with anyone who hasn't bothered or cared enough to follow up. The one guy that impressed me the most came out last Thursday. As it was before a long holiday weekend, he indicated it might be Monday before he would send me an estimate. A little longer than I wanted to wait, but I had a good vibe from him and liked his approach. Monday came and went....it's now Friday, and there's been no follow-up at all eight days later. This was the owner of the company, himself, so there's just no excuse for dropping the ball.

For the life of me, I don't understand how all these companies can afford to spend money on advertising (not to mention taking 3 hours between drive time and time spent assessing our problem) and not close the sale by following up. I'm also dumbfounded that the owner of the HVAC company we spent a lot of money with in the past has not reached out to me to follow up. It costs seven times more to attract a new customer, as opposed to keeping a current customer. The owner had spoken with me on the phone, but sent a very young technician out to pitch installing a dehumidifier in the current system, instead of in the crawl space. We were ready to pull the trigger using two of the contractors -- one to fix the French drain issue and the HVAC folks to install the dehumidifier and UV light.

The only thing I can think is that perhaps they've convinced themselves that it takes X number of sales calls to get a sale. Instead of just accepting that it takes that long, why not change the way you operate and make that conversion rate higher than the industry average? Business owners need to be thinking why a homeowner would go with Contractor A over Contractor B. It's not dumb luck, people. It's all in the follow-up, and this is the easiest fix in the world. You shouldn't spend thousands of dollars on marketing, if you're not willing to invest 20 seconds to send a quick e-mail to follow-up with your prospects.

Here I sit waiting to spend money and fix a problem, but not feeling valued as a customer. If you're reading this and can fix my crawl space issues, now would be a good time to call.