Followup or Die

Your Accountant will Love You

It took me over three years to learn why I had been successful. It all boiled down to one thing: My ability and determination to follow-up with prospects and with new customers and associates after their initial introduction to my product line!

Why so long to do a “duh” you might ask? Very simple! My trainers and mentors did not know to follow-up either! This is part of the reason that salesmen have a very high failure rate. People do not understand marketing and thus the strategic importance of following up on prospects.

Read this statistic about the importance of following up from an association of professional salesmen. The statistics show that the most sales by far are made from the 5^th through the 12^th contact! Here is the data they have compiled about on which contact sales are made:

2% of sales are made on the 1st contact
3% of sales are made on the 2nd contact
5% of sales are made on the 3rd contact
10% of sales are made on the 4th contact
80% of sales are made on the 5th-12th contact

Realizing that, don’t you think it would be good to go out and learn how to be a good salesman? Your mentors are providing that for you right now so listen up. (They are aren’t they? If not, better find a good mentor as going it on your own in any sales business is suicide!)

Like in any education process, it is good to go out and READ more about what successful people do in your chosen field to make the success they have. People like Tom Hopkins, Zig Ziegler, Jim Rohn, A. L. Williams and others are all expert salesmen who are now in the training mode of helping others understand the techniques that got them where they are today.

So, back to the statistics. 80% of all sales are made from the 5^th through the 12^th contact! Wow! Are you beginning to see why your closing rate is so low?

Are you familiar with the “Sales Funnel” concept? Check out this graphic:

See where the “Email” section is? It holds up the entire funnel. It’s the glue the holds your funnel together.

The more email you send to your list, the more they will learn about you, your products, your services and the benefits they will get by buying from you.

EMail is a critical part of your sales funnel. You should be putting a lot of time and effort into it for the life of your business.

“The money is in the list” is something you hear often. There is a good reason for that.

Gil Cargill, a former VP Sales from IBM who now is a sales management consultant provided the following statistics from the Sales & Marketing Management Institute that are interesting relative to how all buyers identify and pursue buying plans:

87% of all leads are never pursued
45% – 63% of the all leads eventually buy the product or service from someone
48% of all sales leads that are pursued are dropped after the first call/meeting
80% of all sales close after the fifth contact/meeting (see above)
73% of sales people do not have a growth plan for their top five accounts

His main point was that effective business development methods ensure we are “in front of the customer” when he/she make the sales decision. Tenacity and planning are more important than eloquence!

Here is another example of why repeated exposure is important. How many times a day do you see or hear about Coca-Cola or McDonalds or Pepsi? I know there is a statistic somewhere on this but I’m betting it’s in the dozens or higher per merchandiser. You hear Coke ads, you see them on billboards, you see them in magazines, on TV, on radio, and on and on.

Why? You already know you like Coke. You already know where to buy it. You already know the cost or nearly so. Why does Coke pay millions per month in advertising costs? One reason and one reason only: To keep Coke on your mind as often as possible so you will be more likely to crave it and therefore buy it. They want you to think of Coke as often as humanly possible!

You should consider marketing your products or services to your buying prospects the same way. It’s war out there where everyone is vying for part of the consumers mind. You don’t have to play dirty to win but you MUST play the game HARD consistently, persistently and with the utmost determination to succeed.

That means getting your message in front of the prospect repeatedly over the course of time from your initial introduction to him until he tells you to stop sending information. This may seem drastic, but who will be sending your prospect information if you are not? Guaranteed it will be someone else who will be there when the time is right for the prospect and you will have lost a sale because you failed to continually stay in the prospects face.

“I don’t have the time to do that!” you say.

“YOU MUST” I say!

You can either do it manually with pencil and paper records. Or, you can do it with some sort of database reminder system. Or with a folder system either manual or electronic.

Or, you can let technology do it for you!

I vote for letting technology do it for me! One system that I use takes my prospect from the initial “Send Info” request through infinite follow-ups! All automatically. That’s right! Automatically, out of my hands. The system just lets me know who requested info and when and it does the rest for me. Aweber is the system I use and have for over 20 years. It does a great job of saving me time, keeping me and my products and services in front of my prospects. And does it for me all electronically 24/7/365.

The result from that a/r sequence: Prospects call or email me; “I’m ready! Tell me what to do next!”

Read what one of the autoresponder sites says about follow-up:

Q. How much would you expect to increase your sales if you made 4 or more follow-up e-mail communications?
A. 173% (E-Marketing Today).

Q. If you doubled this communication rate, could you expect even greater returns?
A. Many customers are showing increases of over 400%

I could never find all the time and organization to follow-up with hundreds of prospects like automated systems can. All I do is write the initial copy of the outgoing emails and load them up into the Aweber system and tell it how far apart to space the emails.

BUT! Don’t think technology will do it all for you. You can close another 20% or more of your contacts with personal contact. People buy “You” as much or more than they buy a product or service. Personal contact makes you into a real person instead of a simple email address or Fax-On-Demand piece of paper.

I most highly recommend calling your prospects or at least send them a video of you. I don’t care if you are good on the phone or not. Don’t try to “sell” anything on the phone, don’t make up a canned pitch like some insurance salesman or mortgage broker. Just strike up a conversation and see what concerns they have. Answer their concern(s) if you can or promise to get back to them via phone, fax or email with an answer.

Always be polite and honest and you will be amazed at how many folks respond positively to you. Use others for three-ways until you get the hang of it. It will add an invaluable measure of success to your business.

Finally, you MUST have a good message, good product, good prices and a better deal than everyone else your consumer has seen. If you follow-up religiously with crummy messages, poor grammar, writing that is not client-centered and benefit-focused, you will NOT see more sales no matter how many times you follow-up. A lot of that “better deal” is YOU too but your written message must be powerful and totally client-centered. If you are not a good writer, find a seasoned copywriter to help you work up the hard-hitting pieces you will need.

So, what are the rules here?

Follow-up from 5 to 12 times to get in that 80% bracket.
Let technology do the follow-up for you.
Call your prospects on the phone and make a friend. Use video linked in your emails.
Use client-centered, benefit-focused copy to get your message across.

How do you get folks to sign up for your email list?

Create a free report (written, audio or video) about the benefits of your product or service. Give it away in exchange for them putting in their email address
Start a periodic ezine with industry information and follow-up weekly with useful information! Again, you will need an enticing reason (free giveaway) for them to give you their email address.
Create industry articles on your blog with enticing ads to get your free reports in exchange for the prospects email address.

I have lots more on building your email list fast and making lots of sales from it over at my site: http://www.TrafficLeadsNSales.com Feel free to drop by to pick my brain!

Remember; the fortune is in the follow-up.

Your accountant will love you if you do follow-up.
You will be out of business if you don’t.

p.s. Don’t forget to hop over to http://www.TrafficLeadsNSales.com. I have a 14 part Nuclear Income Email Coaching series there (Free) that you can learn from as well.