Can I get into sales? A question that I get asked a lot. There have been plenty of debates on this subject and there is no simple answer for this. As for me, I fall into the category that believes that sales, like any other skill, can be learned. But again there are some things which are a pre-requisite for getting into this profession. The attitude and aptitude of a person are critical to ascertain if they’ll be successful in sales. There are a host of other things that one needs, but that’ll be for a later blog.
Today we are going to discuss something that’s an absolute must if you want to get even a single sale. And that activity is the art of ‘Following up’. What is ‘follow-up’ you ask? This is how Merriam-Webster defines it: to maintain contact with (a person) so as to monitor the effects of earlier activities or treatments.
Let us do an exercise. Let’s rewind and imagine yourself as a child… You really want to go to the ice-cream shop. Was mentioning it once to your dad/mom ever enough? You had to be at it constantly to make it happen. For those of you who have kids, they are repeating the same with you, aren’t they?! It’s an inherent nature of a human being to continually persist after things they badly want. Well guess what, if you have to make a sale happen, that’s what needs to be done. And I’m assuming you badly want that sale.
So what’s the best way to follow up? It surely can’t be the way the kids do, every few seconds. To that I would hesitantly agree. There are a few ways this can be theoretically done. For the ease of use, I’ll give you a broad method that’s almost always worked for me. I call it the ‘progressively distanced follow-up’. The idea is that you start your first touch point followed up by another one shortly thereafter and then progressively keep increasing the elapsed time period between the touch points. The only exception to this is that once in a while you follow up immediately in between. Say you have written to the prospect the fourth time and haven’t got a reply yet, you follow up immediately the next day mentioning that you are unsure if your messages are reaching them.
While following up it’s important to remember a few things:
1. Try different ways to reach out to your prospects. Ex: Email, call, assistants, social media etc.
2. Never make a decision for them. While it can get frustrating not to hear back from your prospects, don’t write it in your mail saying ‘this will be the last mail you see from me’ or ‘I won’t write to you again unless you respond’ etc.
3. One of the reasons the prospect might not want to engage with you immediately is because they genuinely do not have a need. And that’s why the ‘progressively distanced follow-up’ method works well, because that way you don’t get into the spam list and can continue your touch point in due time when the requirement does come up. And the prospect will use your name to recall the persistence you had shown. I have personally been on the receiving end of this.
4. Always acknowledge the response: I’m sure all you sales folks get ecstatic when there is a positive response to your cold email/call and go all out to respond immediately. But what do you do when you get a negative response is as critical if not more critical to your success. A lot of people just hang up the phone or don’t reply to those emails. And that’s where you have to be different from the rest of the folks. Be empathetic to their need or lack of it today and assure them of your assistance in the future if the need arises.
Use these methods and see how it changes things for you. I’ve had prospects become customers after 5 years too, and they are among the best.
I’m sure this has been an important lesson, but for anyone still on the fence, here is a statistic.
Percent of sales made per contact:
2%: First contact
3%: Second contact
5%: Third contact
10%: Fourth contact
80%: Fifth-Twelfth contact
(Courtesy: https://ircsalessolutions.com/insights/sales-follow-up-statistics)
That statistic is just one of the many that show the power of follow-ups. Irrespective of your relationship with the customer, following up on issues that are important to you are an absolute must if you have to succeed as a salesperson. With all that said, if you want to make a sale, follow-up!
