The Art of the Sales Follow Up

Most sales are lost in the follow up!

This is because most businesses and salespeople don’t follow up, or don’t follow up enough.

It’s really easy to forget the follow up (I do regularly) but the reality is that most people won’t buy on first contact, and many don’t buy even if a quote has been sent after multiple contacts.

On average, it takes around 8 contacts to even speak to someone in the first place, and then a further 5 follow ups after an initial meeting to get the business.

Many people give up after one.

Business owners and sellers must take control of the follow up and guide potential customers through the sales process and here’s a few tips on how to do this.

What should your Follow Up Look Like?

Here’s the good news. A follow up process is simply a series of touch points to keep potential customers aware of you and the conversations they have had with you.

As such, you don’t always have to be doggedly trying to sell when you follow up, although asking for the next stage of your process during some contacts is necessary, too.

Examples of things you can use as a follow up touch point include:

• Sending a relevant Case Study

• Sending a relevant client testimonial

• Sending your weekly newsletter

• Connecting on LinkedIn – or following on other social media

• Viewing the LinkedIn Profile

• Commenting on/engaging with one of their posts

• Sending an SMS/WhatsApp

• Calling again

Essentially, any touch point that will make a potential customer more aware of you can be classed as a follow up (at least in my opinion). This can then help you positively influence the customer towards your company, and your knowledge, and allow you to provide value in between asking the customer to move ahead with the process.

This then removes any feeling of “pushiness” on your part, too.

How to Organise Follow Up

• Before they enter your pipeline

Before you get a lead to become a prospect, you must balance your follow up with both direct requests and also value generation. As an example, the below could be a starting point to a follow up schedule

This provides a balance between being direct and asking for the customer to move into your sales process, while also looking to add value and connect in less formal ways. It facilitates engagement on different platforms and provides other valuable content which might be of interest to your potential customer.

Different mediums also have different contact styles, so speaking on a platform like LinkedIn will allow the customer to see a different side of your personality.

The process above also leaves a few days between some contacts so that you don’t become too annoying, but still stay on their radar.

Note that this is only a suggestion and it may look different for your organisation. It should also go on for much longer than 14 days, but it’s intended to give you a starting point to work from.

• Once they are a prospect (they’re in your sales pipeline)

There’s no hard and fast rule here but follow up should generally build a bit of urgency once prospects are in your sales process and therefore have become part of your pipeline.

Your contacts may be more direct and more focussed on the challenges they have told you, and more geared to moving them through your process.

Ideally though, once prospects are in your pipeline the follow up should actually be pre-booked and agreed with them, rather than you relying on a more general follow up calendar.

What I mean here is that you should be looking for micro-commitments once customers are in your sales process by saying things like:

“Usually, when we get to this stage, I leave you to look over what we’ve discussed and then have a catch up call with you to discuss further, how would Next Thursday look for you?”

The idea here is that you don’t actually have to rely on a follow up schedule, because you have already pre-booked the next stage in the process with the customer also agreeing to this. This, then, demonstrates a commitment on their part, too.

Of course, if you feel that other communications, like case studies, industry news or testimonials will help your cause, then feel free to add them in, too.

Getting Organised

To effectively follow up in a consistent manner you need to be organised.

Thankfully, though, there are several ways we can be organised without thinking about it.

• Get a CRM

This is my bugbear. The number of businesses that don’t have a functioning CRM is unbelievable and it literally loses them sales every day because they don’t effectively follow up with potential customers.

CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management. Many businesses have them set up to manage their existing customer interactions, but few have them set up to manage sales interactions – as such, many businesses have fancy databases, but not much else.

A good CRM allows you to put in follow up activities, and then reminds you to do them, and allows you to effectively manage your sales pipeline and process so that deals don’t slip through the net.

I tend to recommend Pipedrive to most of my clients. It’s a simple interface and is really geared up for selling.

Another option is Hubspot, which has become a lot more affordable lately. I’d say, however, that Hubspot is more useful if you’re very active with marketing and, therefore, is probably for the more mature business.

• Use Automation

Tools like Apollo allow you to build automatic sequences of contact, via mixed media like phone, linkedin and email.

The advantage with this is that you can set up a cadence, put in the contacts you want, and let it do the rest and is therefore great for building that consistency when you’re busy doing other things as it will work in the background.

Generally I would use this when you’re trying to open a conversation with a potential customer, rather than relying on it for customers that are already in your pipeline.

You can also build sequences in Pipedrive and Hubspot, this is easier to do in Hobspot than in Pipedrive.

• Use your Diary!

Sounds simple, but if you really don’t want to invest any extra cash, then by simply putting reminders of the activity you want to do in your calendar, you can still keep on top of things.

Try putting in time blocked events – like, say “30 mins follow up calls” and then in the meeting description, put in all the calls you want to make on that day – ideally with notes about what happened (or didn’t happen) on the previous call.

• Conclusion

Ultimately, follow up doesn’t always have to be selling. You can use a variety of useful information and touch points to keep you on your customer’s radar. Yours will probably look very different to what I’ve described above, but the important thing is to make sure you do it! If you struggle with consistency, then implement a good CRM and/or an automated contact platform to help to ensure you can build that consistency in the background.

Alongside increasing the number of initial contacts you’ll have, enacting a successful follow up process will have a massive impact on your ability to increase customer acquisition.

As such, get on and implement it and don’t wait for your potential customers to buy themselves.