So as you may know, I'm doing this 30-day personal challenge. Part of it is writing every day, no weekends off. So this is day 1 of my challenge and I wanted to share an important phase of the selling process that is often underestimated: following up with leads. If you have an experienced salesperson in your team, he/she may probably know the importance of following up with leads. However, if you're just starting up and you're wearing many hats (like the sales one), you may be so focused on getting leads that you forget to follow up as often as you should. Don't do it! Following up is half the battle.
Here are some useful tips to get it done right:
- Create a game plan your team is in sync with. This is a detailed but simple set of steps potential leads need to follow to convert into a customer. If you and your team don't have a mutual understanding of this sequence of events, your business won't be as effective as it could be at converting leads. You will end up playing "the fault" game trying to figure out who dropped the ball and missed a step in the process. To prevent this from happening, follow these tips:
- Go through the whole plan with your team
- Assign responsibilities
- Set up time frames
- Hold people accountable
- Segment your lead list as much as possible. This is essential to tailor your message in a way that appeals to your reader. For example, you can segment your lead list according to job title. Then you could create different emails according to your segmentation. A business owner will be concerned about making sales, which will be different from the goals of a website developer which may be concerned with tools or services that will help him be more effective at his job. You'll have the best chance to convert a lead by speaking their "language" either by solving their pain points or offering the benefits they're looking for.
- Organize, build a structure and create a workflow. There's no way you'll be able to follow up with your leads if you're not able to properly document which step of the funnel they are on. Use a spreadsheet or a CRM system such as Salesforce to store your leads. I also schedule follow ups in my calendar and set up reminders.
How often should you follow up?
It depends on your previous interaction with the lead and the stage in the process they are in. In general, if they are warm leads that are showing some type of interest (the lead has been opening your emails and maybe clicking on links) I follow up until I get a "no". Otherwise, if the lead has stopped opening my emails or clicking links, I would stop following up much sooner.
Unfortunately, there is not a hard answer for the number of follow ups you should do, but I would recommend to follow up at the very least, 3 times. Also, don't follow up one day after another, have a couple of days in between. I usually follow up twice in a week.
Do you have any additional tips? share them below