The power of the follow-up when prospecting

I don't know if you've heard, but England have a place in the European Championship final.

What a nail-biting game! It's coming home? Right!?

Surely!

The nation rejoiced last night as Kane scored a rebound from a penalty. He kept his cool, and even though his first attempt was unsuccessful - his follow up got him the victory.

Harry Kane's goal can actually teach us a lot about effective B2B sales.

Are you sure Tom? ??

Stick with me on this...

In sales, you don't always achieve success on your first attempt, but what's often more important is how you react when your first attempt goes wrong.

It's crucial to make sure you follow up successfully.

Here are three things you can do to follow up with a prospect if your initial attempt didn't work:

Add them to a nurture cadence

So your prospect has said no.

After all the time and effort that you've put into building a relationship, the conversation isn't going anywhere. ??

So what's your next move?

Call them in 6 months and see if they've changed their mind?

Give up? Move on?

How about adding them to an 'Opportunity Lost' cadence to nurture the relationship.

A chance to keep the relationship that you've built with your prospect alive so that when they are ready to have the conversation, you are top of their mind.

Learn more here:?https://lnkd.in/dGZMCCt ?(This one is a belter!)

Set yourself reminders

There's no way to remember every single conversation you have with a prospect.

Being organised (something that doesn't come naturally to me) is one of the most important parts of being a successful seller.

Luckily, modern sales professionals have a bunch of tools at their disposal to add structure to their sales process.

For me, it was doing something as simple as setting myself reminders.

Setting reminders to touch base with a prospect that has pushed you back is a great way to keep organised.

My reminders within SalesLoft prompt me to touch base with my prospects at the right time.

I'm then able to review previous interactions with the prospect, listen back to call recordings and use relevant messaging when re-connecting.

Build a personal brand

If your first attempt at prospecting didn't work. It's easy to get disheartened.

Just because your prospect didn't want to interact with you on the day you reached out to them doesn't mean it's over!

When I receive a "no", I kindly invite my prospects to instead follow me on LinkedIn.

Knowing that they will then potentially see my weekly content. So when I do reach out again, I'm much more familiar - making them more likely to say yes!

And if I've made content that resonates with them along the way, they may be even more likely to take the meeting the second time around.

Making my manager do this: