How to Improve Your Follow Up Skills
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You’re not going to believe this, but according to some sources the vast majority of salespeople don’t follow up on a conversation they had with a prospect or customer! Imagine that. Imagine having a productive conversation with a customer, who is looking to do more business with you, and then having absolutely no intention of ever talking to that person again.
Sure, you may have every intention of speaking to that person at some point in the future, but unless you plan your follow up appropriately, you won’t. At least, not until you want something from them, or they from you.
Now imagine... you are NOT the only salesperson they are talking to about their project, or product requirements.
Want to know a secret?
You don’t need to imagine because this is the real world, and your customer IS speaking to other salespeople about their wants and needs. If just one of those other salespeople reads my articles and follows my advice, you’re going to be shit out of luck.
WHEN SHOULD YOU FOLLOW UP?
Following up with customers looks extremely different for every person, every company, every product, and every sales channel. There is no “one-size-fits-all” approach to following up with a lead or a customer. This article is going to be primarily focused on general concepts and techniques that will help you begin to improve on your follow up skills, and will hopefully teach you the importance and value of the seemingly daunting follow up activities!
The amount of time between first contact and your first follow up attempt is going to vary on the scope, cost, and urgency of the project or solution to their pain.
Generally speaking, the type of product or service you are selling is going to be the biggest influence on your entire follow up approach. A one-on-one conversation would be the best way for me to help you with developing specific follow up plans.
That said, the most effective way of determining when to make your first follow up attempt is to simply ask the customer while you still have them on the phone the first time! What better way to plan a follow up than to ask the customer when THEY want you to call back.
That’s right, just ask them!
Chances are that the customer isn’t new to dealing with salespeople and they know you’re going to call them back at some point. And yes, you should want to call them back if your initial conversation goes well.
A common mistake people make during this step is being too vague. If you were to say to a customer, “this all sounds great. I’ll put a proposal together and send it over to you shortly”, then you are not setting any expectations with your customer on your first conversation with them.
Setting expectations and honoring those commitments is a solid way to gain the customer’s trust, and that is the ultimate goal of all your sales efforts.
To avoid this type of mistake, you should try something like, “your time today is greatly appreciated, and I’ll send you a proposal tomorrow morning. When do you think I should give you a call to go over it together?”.
What does this do for you? Well, more importantly, what does this do for your customer?
This tells your customer that you are going to get right on the proposal because their needs are important to you, and they know exactly when they should expect to see it. Not only that, but you are letting them decide when you should call them back. By putting the ball in their court, you are actually getting THEM to make a commitment to you. And since they are the ones making the commitment, they will be more likely to have that next phone conversation with you.
To take it a step further and truly seal the deal, once the customer offers up a day and time that works for them, you can immediately put it on your calendar and send them the invite. This ensures that you are on their schedule that day. The chances of them forgetting your call, or not answering at all, are significantly reduced. If you want to be really clever, always make sure to use the built-in “reminder” feature on your calendar. A simple 15 minute heads up is perfect for this situation.
YOU SCHEDULED THE FOLLOW UP, NOW WHAT?
Well, you just took the first step and that is more than what a majority of salespeople can say! You set the expectations, and now it’s time to honor those commitments.
The first thing you should do is to actually get started on that proposal, or whatever else you promised to work on for them, and be sure to get it done in time to review and/or edit it before your deadline.
If you complete the task ahead of schedule, you do not have to send it over right away. Yes, it could impress them, you getting it done so quickly, but it can also say a few other things. It could say you didn’t put a lot of time into it. It could say to them that this proposal is just a template that you use for everyone else and there’s nothing special in it for them. It could also shout that you want to take this business deal much faster than they want to. Remember, we wanted them to be part of the decision making process for your follow up, so you don’t want to send mixed signals with such a quick delivery.
On top of that, your commitment was to send it over to them the next morning, not later that afternoon. Yes, I believe it is always better to be too early than to be late, but in this particular situation it is much better to play it safe and stick to your word.
To every rule, there is an exception, and this “rule” is no different. If the customer asks you to send it over as soon as you can, then you best get that proposal done and over to them as quickly as possible. This should go without saying, but the same amount of care and attention should be given to that proposal regardless of how quickly they want it.
If your work is fast but sloppy, then you may as well stick to your timeline of the next morning. There’s nothing wrong with that. The next morning may very well be as soon as you can possibly send it over!
If I haven’t repeated myself enough yet, the whole point is to set expectations and honor those commitments. It builds trust, shows that you care about their needs, and you prove that you are dependable. When you do this over and over again, and never fail to do so, you will build a long-lasting business relationship with that person.
After you send the proposal to the customer, your next step is to go and do the same exact thing with the next person. And then you do the same thing with the next person.
And guess what?
Yup, you do the same thing with the following person.
But in all seriousness, after you send over the document, you need to leave them alone until the next phone call that you have scheduled on their calendar. If you forgot to send the calendar invite, that’s okay. Well, not really, you should have sent it, but don’t worry for now. Just make sure that you call them on the day (and time) they asked you to call them.
If the customer tells you to call them “next Tuesday” then you shouldn’t call them on Monday, or Wednesday, or any other day than the day they told you.
YOU CALLED THEM ON THE AGREED UPON DAY, AND THEY DIDN’T ANSWER!!
Oh yeah, that’s going to happen quite often in sales and it can be quite frustrating. As frustrating as it can feel, you must not take their unanswered phone as a personal attack. They may not be intentionally avoiding your call. As a salesperson, you should know that sometimes… things come up unexpectedly. Sometimes, at the very last minute, you discover a “fire” that needs to be put out immediately.
Getting “ghosted” in sales is going to happen to you all the time, and there is really no way to avoid it. There are certainly ways to try and minimize the risk, or work around a missed appointment, but that will be discussed in a future article.
If they miss your call, then you just have to remain positive and give them a few minutes. My general rule of thumb is to give them another call fifteen minutes later. You don’t want to call back too quickly, because you respect their time, but you also don’t want to appear as someone who gives up too easily, and not call them back at all.
There is a pretty good chance that they will call you back either a few minutes after your first call, or within twenty minutes of your second attempt. This is based simply on my experience in sales, and is not based on a known statistic. If and when they call you back, you can just begin your review of the proposal you sent over the previous week.
On the other hand, there is also a chance that they will miss both of your attempts and not call you back at all. This is going to happen as well, and you cannot take it personally. The key here is to stay positive and just try again! And keep trying to follow up until you get them on the phone eventually.
The immediate thing to do is to give them some more time. You just called them twice in one hour, and you don’t want to come across as intrusive and desperate. They know you want to talk to them, and they want to talk to you, but there is usually a good reason they couldn’t that first time.
I typically wait about an hour or two after my second attempt, and I send them a quick email that I like to call a “nudge”. This email should not be an explanation of what you were going to say during your conversation, or anything about what you wanted to talk about at all. They know what you want to talk about, and they may feel badly for missing your call. Keep it simple.
You can send a very simple message like:
Hi Customer,
Something must have come up, and I hope everything is alright.
Is there another day this week we can connect?
Nothing more than that needs to be said. It is a casual message that shows you are understanding and know that things come up, and you won’t be deterred or too annoying. You gave them plenty of time to contact you back, and now you are simply asking them when they are available next.
I won’t lie to you, you may have to do this several times. You may schedule and miss two or three phone calls with them before you actually get them on the phone. You just have to remember to not take it personally, and remain positive. You will get them on the line, and when that happens you must act as if none of those missed calls ever happened.
When the customer apologizes for blowing you off so many times, you don’t have to make a big deal of it. You can simply say, “no need to apologize, I appreciate your time”, and carry on with your conversation. There are times where people will offer up the reasoning for missing the calls, and it can be for personal reasons. If they offer up a tangible reason, it’s okay to ask them if they are alright. It shows compassion. But unless that happens, it’s best to just remind them that you respect their time verbally (you have been showing them that all along) and begin the conversation like normal.
A lot of larger business deals will require several rounds of this type of follow up. After your first follow up call with them, you want to schedule your next call with them, if possible. If there are any action items from your call, or there is a reason you want to call them back, you ask them when you should do it.
And the cycle continues.
CONCLUSION
Following up is 90% of your job as a salesperson. And you know what that means? The majority of salespeople are only doing 10% of what they could be doing. I’m not saying they are only putting in 10% of the effort, I’m saying they have the potential to earn 90% more by simply improving their follow up skills!
Although, following up does not always involve an initial conversation with someone. Following up is also something that is very important when you are prospecting. This article only focuses on the general concepts of effective follow up, but there is so much more to cover in upcoming articles.
If you are a salesperson who is not hitting your quota, or if you are hitting your quota and you won’t settle for the status quo, then you need to take a look at how often you follow up with customers, leads, proposals, quotes or anything that you send to someone.
I would be willing to bet that you don’t follow up nearly as often as you think you do. In fact, if you are actually able to easily find this information in a CRM, then you already have a tool that can help you make more money. A CRM is a powerful tool, and I can teach you how to use it to your advantage, especially if you use SalesForce.com.
If you work for a company who doesn’t have a CRM, or if you have one and it just isn’t cutting it anymore, I would strongly suggest SalesForce to any company. The software allows you to access it from a web browser on any internet connected device, and it allows you to schedule calls, emails, visits, or any other appointments you have.
You can build reports based on practically any piece of information about your customers, and you can use that to review your calls and emails with them (assuming you log your calls, as you should). These reports can also be based on sales activities that are logged in the system. This is great for sales managers as well as the salespeople who depend on it.
There are also really clever plug-ins for it such as MapAnything which lets you map your customers out so you can plot out your different appointments, and SalesForce tells you in which order you should visit them - and how you should get there.
Reach out to me if you want to learn how to take your CRM and transform it into your personal ATM instead of an annoying piece of software your boss keeps talking about!
Are there any other sales topics you would like to see covered in a future article?
Send me a message and let me know!
