Studies show about 40-50% of all inbound sales leads are never followed up. Dang! That’s a doozy isn’t it!
So many started conversations, potential business deals, opportunities to help and give left hanging. So many sales conversations down the drain. So many lost possibilities … all because of follow up failure.
Yes you’re busy, but you should never be too busy to follow up with those you have connected with and met. You should never be too busy to keep a sales conversation going. And you should never be too busy to make good on a promise you made.
Follow up is important — it’s your opportunity to build on your first impression and create a lasting impression, to show the other person you do care and you can be counted on, and to add value to your growing relationship.
Here’s are 5 marketing tips to help you fix your follow up:
Follow Up Marketing Tip 1: Follow up on everything. Failure to follow up leaves massive amounts of money on the table
Failure to follow up is one of the most common ways that entrepreneurs and business owners sabotage their own success by simply not collecting the money on the table. Millions of dollars are lost by businesses around the world every year simply because they get busy and they fail to follow up with leads from networking events, conferences, social media, email, voicemail, referrals, and more. If you want or need to make more money, fix your follow up and you’ll see an increase in your bottom line.
Follow Up Marketing Tip 2: Invest in quality follow up / auto responder software
Following up doesn’t have to be hard, tedious, or unenjoyable. If you invest in the right software, you can make following up easy, fast, and simple. There is software available to small businesses that allows you to write, pre-schedule, and automate your follow up, to schedule reminders to follow up with specific leads after a set amount of time, and even to automate follow up print mail pieces, emails, texts, and phone calls. With the right software, you can make your follow up as person or as automated as you want — you’ve just got to make the decision to do it.
Follow Up Marketing Tip 3: Follow up on contacts made and leads generated at an event right away … waiting will make your follow up harder
People are busy and they will forget about you if you don’t follow up with them right away. Plus, the faster you follow up the easier it will be because they will remember you, and the conversation you had will still be fresh in their mind. It’s much easier to follow up with someone a day or two or even a week after an event, and those you are reaching out to will be impressed with your action and follow up. It gets much harder and the return-on-effort plummets when you wait too long. Following up a couple weeks or a month later makes people think 1) they weren’t very important to you; 2) you forgot about them; 3) you’ve got enough business already and you’re too busy for them.
Follow Up Marketing Tip 4: Use your auto responders to maintain a connection with your clients and customers and continue to deliver value
If you invest in follow up / auto responder software, use it! Use it to create follow up and nurture campaigns for your clients and customers to help you stay in touch with them after the sale is made or after your work together is done. Use your follow up sequences to deliver even more value, ask for referrals, upsell other products or services, surprise them with free gifts, and more. The opportunities of what you can do with your auto responders is limitless. You just need to come up with the strategy that works best for you.
Follow Up Marketing Tip 5: Create your follow up in advance to save time
If you own a business you’re probably the busiest person you know. Even though you know it is important, finding the time to follow up may be a challenge for you. The solution is to create your follow up materials and sequences in advance so you can follow up quickly and efficiently. Whether you’re attending an event or conference, or speaking to a group, create your follow up materials before the event, meaning you write your emails, craft your follow up sequences, print your note card or thank you cards, and get everything ready to follow up in advance. Then after the event, add some details and insights from the event to your emails and follow up sequence and you’re good to go!
What about you? What tips do you have on following up?
About Jennifer Bourn
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I’ve got another good reason why we cannot afford to ignore followup. I know that many of your design clients and my business consulting clients aim for creating the great content that drives the right client prospect to the website, to download an item and get on an email list. If your content is positioned right, marketing research shows that this person will buy a related service within 24 months on average. So without followup, and right away, how can you expect they are going to remember YOU when they are ready to buy? Followup bridges the gap between the lead generation and the eventual sale. But too many people focus only on marketing. Great tips!
Sherri – That is awesome. Thanks for sharing … Follow up does bridge the gap between the lead generation and the eventual sale. I am going to add this to my post now!
Yes! Prepare ahead of time! Sure, it’s a pain sometimes when we are rushing around just trying to keep our heads above water, but by having the plan well thought out, the online and offline follow up steps identified and ready to go, it’s going to happen. AND, you can delegate some of this if it is already in place!
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this.
Amy – Preparing your follow up does make a big difference and increases the probability that you are actually going to do it! And YES!!! You can delegate it too :)
Jennifer,
You are always such a wealth of information. I will admit, follow up is not my strong suit. However, you have really put a spotlight on it here and helped me realize that the fortune is in the follow up. It really is just as important, if not more so, than the rest of what we do as business owners. I am committed to owning it and following up!
Kristi
Kristi – You’ll find that successful follow up will yield more sales than a lot of other marketing strategies because you’ve already made a connection.
This talks business! Some shrewd marketing tips to rev up your sales volumes.
Thanks Alexis!
Great tips Jennifer … I’m always amazed at how many prospects I talk to who don’t have any type of autoresponder system in place for follow-up. They want to build their lists and come up with a good follow-up system, but their lists consist of their database in Outlook or Act or somewhere like that. Their follow-up is iffy at best. Whether you are using a high end product like Infusionsoft or something moderate like 1ShoppingCart or one of it’s private Labels (Practice Pay Solutions is awesome!), it’s so easy to set up follow up sequences for just about any occasion.
Terry – I agree! It’s not as difficult or as scary as people believe … once you get started it is all pretty methodical :) A definite must!
I have never considered auto responder as a right kind of follow up. Yet actually, if one really is very busy and has no time to follow up directly, then it may be a solution:) Wolud you advice on a some kind of reliable software?
We use Infusionsoft for our follow sequences and auto responders … You can find a list of all of our recommended vendors here –> http://www.bourncreative.com/recommended-vendors
Jennifer:
Thank you for sharing your words of wisdom; I always learn such valuable things. I do have a follow up system (infusionsoft) but have not used it to follow up with contacts after a networking event because I was afraid they would spam me; thinking that I put them on my list. So, do you use your autoresponders for following up with networking contacts? Thank you!
Maureen – Yes. I do use my auto responders to follow up after an event, but I make sure not to add them to my marketing list. I keep their names separate, and when I email them, I make it very clear they haven’t been added to my list and will not be without express permission. I invite them to opt-in if they would like in the PS. Then after the follow up is complete, I remove the list from my account.
Thank you Jennifer! I am setting up my campaign right now!