Nurturing Customer Relationships by Jim Cecil and Eric Rabinowitz - Book Review
and marketing automation projects I have
been working on using ACT! by Sage and Infusionsoft.
However, I had time to read a book on nurture marketing. This book got me to thinking about how we all try new things in marketing but sometimes the tried and true still work the best today.
We sometimes lose our way when trying to get out the word about our product and services. In this world we want the sale now not five days from now. We go for the easy sale and leave the others behind.
As the sub-title states “A Step-by-Step Process for Growing Clients by Design”, we forget that there are steps to marketing and selling and nurturing is the core to doing it successfully.
As they explain nurturing in the book it’s like farming. Think about this for a minute - farming. A farmer plants the seeds and then nurtures them with dripping water, tilling and fertilizer to nourish and see the plants grow to be harvested.
Your business should be farming and nurturing customer relationships; finding clients that fit your product or services; drip marketing a series of letters, emails and calls to them; educating them on how your products and services can help them.
The seed the farmer plants takes time to grow to a mature plant before harvesting. The same thing happens in nurturing potential new customers. We keep sending them a consistent message on why and how our products and services can help them. Many will not be ready to buy today but they will in the near future when the need arises. That’s when you can harvest a new customer.
This book lays it all out for you in an easy to read explanation of the process of nurturing. It includes a Prospect Grading Tool and a Sample Drip Irrigation (marketing) Plan.
The templates are great because they are written in a way that you can change them slightly to fit your message. No need to hire a copywriter. You can start right away nurturing new customer relationships.
I had the pleasure of personally speaking with Jim Cecil recently. We discussed the concept of nurture marketing and how many businesses don’t do it today but just go after the easy sales. They actually work harder by doing a lot of cold calling and knocking on businesses doors looking for sales. If they really followed nurture marketing then they would grow/warm up the prospect to become a customer.
As you can tell I highly recommend Nurturing Customer Relationships by Jim Cecil and Eric Rabinowitz. For a small investment of $29.95 it’s a bargain and the Return on Investment is astronomical.
