8 Keys to Effective Follow Up
There’s no doubt about it – successful salespeople today conduct more follow up calls than they used to. Buying cycles are getting longer, and new generations are accustomed to having so much information at their fingertips that they tend to take more time, more interactions, and more information prior to making a big investment.
Follow up is rarely given the focus it deserves when it comes to sales training and sales teams. We dedicate so much attention to closing, objection handling, and negotiating... and this is all important. But at the end of the day, there will be many occasions when a prospect simply won’t make a decision on the spot. Considering how many points of contact are standard for most sales professionals’ today, the skill of following up successfully is often what ‘makes or breaks’ a sale.
When it comes to separating the mediocre from the great salespeople, the difference often comes down to very small actions and processes conducted consistently and with a positive mindset. Here are 8 keys to effective follow up:
1. Have a game plan
It’s easy to pick up the phone and ‘see where things go’. We can make 100 calls in a day and feel super productive, but if those calls were not well thought out we were probably about as productive as the national government at the moment (from wherever you’re reading this I presume that simile applies). As with so many other things, preparation precedes outcomes.
So before picking up the phone, you need a game plan. You need to know why the answer before wasn’t a yes, and what has to change for it to become a yes. Of course, this presumes that you actually left the last interaction with this information (if you didn’t, that’s a whole other article).
What are you going to say? Where are you going to lead the conversation? What value to you have to add to this conversation?
Map it out, and practice with a colleague if necessary before picking up the phone.
2. Lead with a summary
What did you eat for dinner two Tuesdays ago? What songs did you listen to on your way to work yesterday?
People don’t remember much. Unless we’ve actively tried to recall the information, it’s likely that quite a bit has been lost between your last interaction and your follow up. A beautiful beginning to a follow up phone call involves summarizing what has happened up until that point – for example, ‘when we last spoke, you were happy with Product A, with features A, B and C; and you were going run Package X past your business partner.’
3. Presume progress
This is very important. It is easy to get caught into a vicious cycle of having the same conversations over and over again. You need to operate with the presumption that the prospect has given due consideration to your last meeting, and done whatever it is that they said they were going to. As part of this presumption, you are moving the sales process forward in a positive way.
For example, after the summary in #2, you might follow up with, ‘How did that conversation go?’
This is far more effective than asking ‘Did you get a chance to talk to your business partner?’, which is a closed question and operates on the premise that the prospect may be stagnant in their position.
Asking an open, presumptive question as an approach also has some Challenger flavour to it, in being assertive and taking some control of where the conversation is going.
4. Consciously re-establish rapport
Too often, salespeople operate with the presumption that because they were in rapport with their prospect before, it will automatically resume when they contact the prospect again for a follow up. It’s important to think of rapport as being a state rather than an outcome – a state you need to consistently work towards maintaining, rather than something that is built once.
This means that, where possible on the follow up, we need to be conscious of re-establishing and maintaining a state of rapport. This can be achieved through mirroring tone of voice and language, and reintroducing points of commonality that you’ve found already. Work to connect on a personal level with the customer – even over the phone.
5. Follow the process
If your follow up results in another objection, as they sometimes do, it’s important not to rush through it. A common response is to simply say something like ‘Okay, when should I give you a call back?’ This doesn’t actually achieve anything except signaling the client that you don’t know how to deal with their concern so you’re hoping with time they’ll deal with it themselves.
Instead, take a deep breath, slow down, and focus on following the process properly, as though the client were in front of you. Remember: If you schedule another follow up without going through the concern, you’re taking away your opportunity to help the customer make an informed decision.
6. Follow the customer’s lead
Picture this: You organize to call a customer at a certain date and time. When you ring them, you reach their voicemail. After leaving a voicemail, the customer sends you a text message.
We’ve all been there, right? Some salespeople from here will pick the phone back up again and try to ring the customer back.
This is because we’ve been trained for decades with the understanding that the phone and face to face are king, and therefore any other means of communication should be avoided. While I am inclined to agree that phone calls and face-to-face interactions allow us to (often) have more engaging, interesting and frank conversations, it is far more important to follow the customer’s lead. People tell you who they are and how they like to be communicated with – it’s when we follow our own preferences instead that we end up with less effective communications.
The customer wants to text? Then respond with texting – when you go with it you’ll be surprised how much more amenable to progress your customers will be.
7. Take notes and do a post-call review
Always, always, always keep incredibly detailed notes of all interactions you have. Write down everything, beyond simply what qualifying information you gathered and what the client is interested in. Write down the language they used, the questions they asked, the common ground you created (you both love the theatre? Great!) This information is very useful – particularly because if you have a lot of prospects it can be hard to keep up with the personal stories and interests they’ve each shared with you.
After the call, go through your notes and give yourself a one-minute review. Did you give a summary, presume progress, ask an open presumptive question, provide value, overcome concerns? How effective was that call? What could you have done better? What’s the next step?
8. Actually Follow Up
Perhaps the greatest key to effective follow up: Actually do it.
Many amazing potential prospects have been lost in the pipeline due to poor process. If you don’t set specific times to follow up, and actually follow through, you will lose many prospects who were only one call away from being clients!
Have any more you would add to this list?
Sonia
This blog post was originally posted on my training website, Statusone.com.au, on March 26, 2018. I have since been moving some of my favourite blog posts from there over to here, as this is now my ‘content hub’ and I want you to have access to some of the cool stuff I’ve written about before. You can still check out the Status One site if you’re interested in corporate training if you want. Also, don’t forget to sign up for the newsletter below for updates and weekly exclusive content.