Why Should You Follow Up With a Prospect?
A quick answer to this would be to sell! If you think you have a bigger fish to fry than to follow up with your prospects, then you’re wrong. Immediate follow-up with your potential client is imperative to master the hustle. Being able to close many deals and customer relationships depends on follow-ups. It serves as a constant reminder in a deal that you are trying to crush it and win to your benefit.
When to follow up?
Always have a plan because the person with the highest clarity and persistence in the room always wins. The best way to follow up with a prospect is by situating yourself well before encountering them and formulating an effective follow-up line.
- If the prospect was a referral from one of your existing contacts, then it makes sense to follow up with them, not only because of their interest in your product or service, but because of the existing relationship with your other client. If you have scraped the person from a database, then you should avoid aggressive follow-ups because it can irritate the prospective contact. It is still good to follow up at least once to make sure that your email didn’t get lost in their inbox.
- Some people do not respond at all even after a follow-up email. The best thing that you can do in such situations is to not push, and leave things to their discretion.
In the instance of a prospect showing interest in your offer, but not replying to emails, the best thing to do is to try reaching out to them through a phone call rather than email. Humor is one of the best ways possible to relax a prospect and make them more inclined to respond to your emails.
Have a reason to follow up
There must be a reason for follow up. The most effective emails are the ones that create a sense of urgency. Think about ways to make them feel good about your product/service. The better you position your product in their eyes, the more likely they will reply back.
Putting their needs before your product is essential. Consultative selling is one of the most effective selling techniques. It makes you appear more concerned about their problems rather than selling your product.
Have a call to action when following up
It is imperative for you to have a call to action after the follow-up. Set up a meeting. Suggest meeting dates that are the most convenient for a prospect. This will advance the likelihood of closing the deal. Another call to action could be an offer that you have for them. Have a reason and a clear purpose.
The whole point of the follow up message above is to create a sense of urgency. You need to inspire an atmosphere of impulse.
Use Tools to Automate Your Follow up
There might be instances when you have to deal with a lot of prospects. But there are tools designed to remind you of follow-ups which are very useful. These convenient tools can help you avoid missing on-the-job tasks.
Tubular.io – This is a great platform for following up. It is affordable and worth the investment if you’re planning to scale up your outbound efforts.
Followup.cc — Simply add this to your CC and it will remind you to follow up. Old school, but still effective.
Boomerang — Most sales people love this because of how it sends you inbox reminders and it’s simple to choose the times you want to follow up.
Trello — You can set notifications and notes with this. As budget friendly as it gets since it’s free!
When Not to Follow Up
Relentless following-ups can ruin things for a company. You should know when to pull the plug. The most simple explanation for this is that the prospect gets irritated by the number of messages from you that flood their inbox. This shows desperation on your part, which can crush the deal and put your product/service in question. Ticking someone off is definitely not the correct way to approach sales. Subtlety is fundamental to sounding like someone who has a high-quality service/product to offer and doesn’t need to sound a lot of bells and whistles. Pushy behavior always backfires. Tact and timing is everything.
Timing for follow up
Never disturb prospects who are busy on weekdays. Timing is critical in this process. You have to sound like you are adjusting in the process of developing a bond with them. Calls and meetings are most often conducted according to the comfort of the prospect rather than yours. Don’t schedule a meeting on a weekday because your prospect might already be swamped with work. A meeting at this time might be the least valuable to them in the midst of their hectic job. Saturdays and Sundays usually work best for such meetings or calls.
Following up on other platforms
Following up doesn’t necessarily have to be on email. You can try social media, their blog (comment/follow them on their blog), LinkedIn, phone call and even snail mail, which might strike prospects as old fashioned but charming.
Following up is, at the end of the day, telling your prospect that you remember them and that you will always be the one leading them towards their interests via your product or service. A correct way of following up entails choosing an appropriate time for interaction, taking immense care in how you communicate, writing messages and never missing out on opportunities to send them praiseworthy or urgent emails. All your actions count and most of the time your endeavours will pay off.
