Are you using the power of follow-up?

Are you using the Power of Follow-up?

Following-up is the process of continuing to contact potential customers. It is particularly important to use follow-up, because statistics show that the majority of sales are not made on the 1st, 2nd, 3rd or even 4th contact with prospects. In fact, they are more normally made somewhere between the 5th and 12th contact. Obviously, these figures will vary depending on the sector and what you are selling, but it is a good starting point.

Tips

1.      Remember most sales are made on the 5th – 12th follow up, so keep trying

2.      Use a variety of follow up methods – you never know which one will work for you and you might lose the sale by not using it.

3.      Plan to follow up – then you are much more likely to do it

4.      Don’t be a stalker! Spread out your follow ups over days, weeks and months – you are playing a long-term game

5.      Don’t be scared – the worst that can happen is that they say ‘no’!

Case Study

Toni ran a bespoke cake making service, creating beautiful personalised cakes for special occasions. She was often very busy at times like Christmas, Easter and Valentine’s day, but throughout the rest of the year, business could be erratic and her cash flow fluctuated from month to month.

May was a particularly quiet month and it was clear Toni was going to struggle to pay her bills.

She was due to go to a regular networking meeting and knew that one of the members was a sales trainer, so she rang her and asked her advice.

The trainer asked what Toni did with enquiries. Toni explained that these were all kept on a memo pad, but the memo slips were scattered everywhere. The sales trainer then gave her some very simple advice:

“Find all of your enquiry slips. Sort them out into people who used you and people who didn’t. Then follow up the ones who didn’t.”

She also told Toni to use a variety of different methods and to contact everyone at least once a month, every month.

Once Toni had found all the memo slips she realised that she had over 150 enquiries from people who had not ended up using her. She calculated that if she rang 8 people every day, then it would take her about a month to contact all of them. She worked out what to say – nothing complicated, but along the lines of

“Hello, this is Toni from Toni’s Cakes, you contacted us a while ago regarding (whatever their enquiry was about). I wondered, what is the situation now - are you still interested?”

Armed with this simple strategy, Toni methodically started to work through her list. After only one week, she had picked up 3 definite orders and 2 new quotes. Also, because she had asked everyone she spoke to if she could put them on her mailing list, she now had 30 people on record that she could contact next month by email.

The following month, Toni put together a simple newsletter, featuring pictures of cakes and emailed it to her new list of prospects. Within 24 hours of the newsletter going out, she had taken 4 more enquiries about bespoke cakes.

Over the next few months, Toni continued to use the follow up strategy, adding new enquiries as they came in and varying how she contacted people. Slowly but surely, her sales continued to grow. After 12 months, she did some analysis and realised that most of her new sales had come from people that she had contacted at least 6 times. She didn’t need any more convincing and continued to use the follow up strategy with great success as a highly effective but non-pushy way of bringing in sales.

I hope you found this useful. If you would like my free e-guide "37 Fresh and Evergreen ways to Get the Attention of Prospective Clients" get your copy here

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