Sales Follow Up – Are You Winging It?

Do you have a plan for sales follow up with prospects or are you winging it? When you engage with a prospect for the first time, do you already have another 5-7 ideas for following up in mind? Or do you give up after a couple of attempts?

When you do follow up, are you just “checking in” or are you moving the prospect along toward a decision? Here are a few ideas to keep the courtship alive…

1. Have a 5-7 step (or more) plan in place to stay professionally persistent with your sales follow up. You may have to adjust the plan based on your conversations with your prospects, but having no plan at all usually leads to weak follow up that ends up as missed opportunities.

2. Make sure your sales follow up plan is “value centered.” The majority of your follow-up steps should be based on providing more value to the prospect. Have reports, checklists, articles, videos, and the like ready to send to your prospect; something that you know they will bring some form of value to them – to either their business or to them personally.

3. Do your best to avoid “just checking in” as part of your sales follow up.  This isn’t always easy to do, as the prospect may have told you they will have a decision by a certain time and you’ve not heard back from them. Nonetheless, as often as you can, reach out to your prospects with some form of value that either educates and/or questions their assumptions.

4. While on the phone with your prospect – who is not ready to move forward with you – see if you can agree what the next best step will be, that allows you to remain appropriately proactive. Short of the gaining agreement for the next step, as soon as you get off the phone (or leave the presence of a prospect), think through what your next step; when it will be and what you will do. Take good notes so that when the reminder pops up, your memory your entire process to this point will be refreshed.

5. Remember, it’s not your prospect’s job to say, “I’m ready to work with you.” It’s your job to make a recommendation and gain agreement to move forward with that recommendation.

In Summary

1. No more winging it when it comes to sales follow up. Have a well-defined plan.

2. Make the plan about providing value to the prospect first, but never forget to ask for the opportunity to work with them.

What do you do to stay professionally persistent? I would enjoy hearing from you. Send an email directly to me at BillCates@ReferralCoach.com