A few minutes with a customer's file before you reach out change the odds that they say yes. Skip those minutes and you eventually make a mistake the customer notices at once: you offer them something they already bought from you.
The same customer, better odds
Suppose you already keep a file on every customer. The question here is what happens when the file exists and you pick up the phone without opening it.
The source answers with numbers. If you go for a sale without using the details you entered in the files, you might have a 50-50 chance of closing. Study those details first and the odds improve to 80-20 or better.
Same customer, same offer, same product. The only difference is whether you opened the file before you made the call or knocked on the door.
The source's word is study. It means a pass serious enough that the details work for you inside the conversation itself. A quick glance doesn't get you there.
Suppose an insurance agent spends two minutes with the customer's file before a renewal call. She sees when the policy was last renewed and which coverage the customer declined before, and why. Her call opens with the flood coverage the customer passed on last time and asks whether that still feels right. It sounds nothing like a call that opens by asking whether he has a car.
Now the other side. A renovation contractor shows up to a follow-up meeting without checking what was agreed at the last one, and pitches a solution the customer already turned down. The customer says no a second time, and starts wondering whether the contractor remembers him at all.
What you read for
The reading serves two purposes. The first is to get familiar with the person and with what their next step is. It points forward: which service makes sense to offer this person next, given what has already happened with them.
The second is easy to miss. The file gets updated while you read it. If you find that the customer changed an address or a phone number, you add it right then, so the records stay complete.
Suppose a bike shop owner checks a customer's card before a routine tune-up and notices an old work address. She corrects it on the spot. Otherwise the pickup notice could go to the wrong place, and she would find out half a year later.
Then there is tone. The source tells you to take the tone level and the interest level of the person whose mail you find in the folder. If the customer was enthusiastic, cautious, businesslike or quick, you don't invent that again for every conversation. You pull it from the file.
That is how a customer comes to feel that you remember how the last conversation went. A couples therapist who reads her notes from the previous session won't open lightly with a couple who ended on a hard conversation. She also won't open heavily with a couple who ended on a laugh.
The failure that has a name
This chapter exists mostly to prevent one failure, and the source names it:
“writing to offer a service the person has already taken”
The failure is specific: you offer a customer exactly what they already bought from you. The source also doesn't leave the cause open. There are two possible causes. Either you wrote without opening the file, or your files are so far behind that they have become meaningless. There is no third scenario.
Next to it, the source lists a related symptom with the same root. A person's name sits in the mailing list two or three times, so they get two or three copies of every piece. It shows a file that isn't managed as one organized system, which is the problem the previous chapter deals with.
Suppose a bike shop has an annual maintenance club and mails a launch-price promotion for it to its whole list. The message lands with customers who already pay for that club.
Or suppose a tax office sends a reminder to file the annual return to a client who filed through the office a month earlier. The reminder went out automatically to the whole list, with no check of individual files. The client calls in upset, sure there is a mistake in his file.
Why the mistake costs so much
It costs so much because the bar is lower than it looks. The source says the public expects good service, and by that it means things like positive scheduling and accuracy.
The measure is accuracy, and no breakthrough product is required. An offer for a service the customer already bought is the opposite of accuracy. Without a word, it tells the customer that you don't remember who they are.
An auto repair shop texts every customer a special price on its annual service package. It reaches someone who renewed that same package two weeks ago. The list came out of the marketing system, and the customer file stayed at the front desk.
What the booklet has on this
In The Second Sale, this chapter ends with two short exercises: two minutes first, and a check for the failure. The chapter before it builds the files themselves, and the chapter after it covers each customer's next step.
A customer who receives an offer for something they already bought understands that you don't remember them. A few minutes with their file before you reach out prevents that.