Small businesses tend to be a little resistant when it comes to following up with prospects. Many business owners are afraid to come off as too pushy. If you let your own apprehension take over and not follow up, you are literally leaving money on the table. Are you really willing to forgo business growth?
While coaching might help some people, it will be well worth it, in the end, to be able to make those follow-ups with your potential customers. Doing so will give you a much better chance to make them returning and loyal customers. But first, let’s get to the bottom of the common misconceptions when and why you should follow up with prospects.
Misconceptions About Follow-ups
Thinking that you’re a lot busier than your potential customers is false. You should change the perception of your time. Everyone is busy. Period. Just as you accidentally looked over an important email one day and forgot to respond, the same is true for your prospects.
It’s not always the case that someone is ignoring you. Prospects could honestly just be overlooking your message or thinking they’ll eventually find the time to respond. In these cases, not following up with prospects means throwing away an opportunity.
Over 80% of sales require five follow up calls according to statistics. If you never follow up in the first place, you are not even trying. Knowing this, there’s really no excuse for not consistently following up with potential customers.
Benefits Of Following Up With Prospects
The list of benefits could go on forever. Here, we take a look at three very key ones to keep in mind.
1. Shows That You Don’t Take Customers For Granted
By following up with prospects consistently, you show that you value them and are looking to establish a long-term relationship. Intermittent calls and emails do little to build rapport. While following up, be sure to summarize your previous contacts. Show that you’re detail oriented and focused on their business.
2. Establishes Rapport
Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither are most sales. In most cases, you won’t be the only potential sales person that the prospect is dealing with. If you follow up consistently, however, you could be establishing a rapport with prospects and become part of their routine. Relationships matter in business. Taking the time to establish a good rapport with regular follow-ups can go a long way toward helping them decide who they want to do business with.
3. Potential To Boost Sales
This one’s a no brainer. While many salespeople give up after one or two follow-ups, those who excel in sales know that persistence literally pays. Who wouldn’t like to boost sales just by making a simple follow up call with a prospect? Well, it’s really that simple! Sometimes you just need some evidence to know that follow-ups work.
Tips For Successful Follow-ups
Once you’ve understood why following up with prospects is crucial for your business growth, you should learn the best practices. There are several prospecting sales tools available on the market, for this reason, it can be very simple to create routine follow-ups.
Read Also: The Ultimate List Of (FREE) Sales Prospecting Tools
1. Use Multiple Channels To Reach Out
There are many sales follow-up channels that can be utilized and even tailored to your specific business needs. You should be using a mix of different channels rather than just choosing one and hoping for success.
A few of the most popular channels include email, phone calls, and texting. If phone calls aren’t your cup of tea, you can create an automatic follow-up email cadence that is sent to a prospect after a call. All this can be edited to meet each prospect needs. Try mixing up channels by sending out a follow-up text message after you get off a call with a prospect.
According to statistics, this approach has a conversion rate of 40% higher than other channels. This multi-channel approach is an effective way to perform follow-ups.
2. Use Templates
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Customization can become crucial in email follow-ups as 33% of email recipients open emails based on subject line alone. Templates can also be used for sending out text messages to prospects after a phone call or interaction.
3. Timing Is Important
Timing is a crucial element when it comes to being successful with follow-ups. The perfect message that’s sent at the wrong time only ends in a waste of your own time. There are many different factors that play into the “right” time to send out a follow-up. While there is no perfect time of day to send out a follow-up, the rule of thumb is to follow-up with someone 48 hours after your initial interaction.
Conclusion
There’s no need to attach negative connotations to follow-ups, the truth is they’re effective and should serve as a cornerstone of any sales process. Once you’ve developed a routine for sending follow-ups, don’t neglect to measure the success of the different tactics employed.
There are many different metrics you can use to measure your success rate. Don’t keep avoiding following-up with potential customers and start boosting your sales today.
