The Sometimes Painful Art of B2B Follow Up
Nesh Thompson | March 3rd, 2009 - 4:17 pmI will admit that ‘follow up’ isn’t one of my strong points. I have a natural tendency to dislike and shy away from doing something that I myself don’t like happening to me. I don’t like being followed… which is basically what follow up calls are all about. In the same way that as a kid I didn’t like my mother checking to see if I had brushed my teeth or put the lid back on the toothpaste or finished tidying my bedroom, I have never been fond of follow up calls which have no basis other than to check to see if I have done what I said I was going to do. Maybe it is because of this very real similarity to parental overseeing that I tend to get petulant in such situations.
I get that one needs to keep in contact with prospective customers to move the sales cycle along yet I find that there are plenty of methods of keeping in contact with someone other than bothering them with what is in effect a pressure call. You want information from me, you want to know whether I am interested or not, you wish to know if I am going to buy your product. What do I get from such a call? Nothing, and it doesn’t matter whether the last call that you made was the most brilliant and friendly conversation that I have had all week because when you call to get a blanket decision from me on your terms when you want – I feel backed into a corner and that is dangerous ground especially if you are following up a cold call.
I have often said (as have many others) that B2B is about relationships. I don’t care how long I have to be in contact with a person as long as that relationship offers mutual benefit. A person may be in contact with you for a very long time before they actually decide that they need your service or product but when they do they have a relationship that they can rely on. One doesn’t start a meaningful relationship by doing all the hard work of finding out a prospective clients problems and discussing ideas to then present an ultimatum for which the answers can only be ‘I am’ or ‘I am not’. Presented with that type of question I am tending to go with the ‘I am not’. End of relationship.
I find that unless I have something that I can offer to the prospective client then a follow up call is generally meaningless. When I do make a follow up call my intention isn’t to ‘get information’ but rather to further the long term goal of developing a relationship. If someone is interested in your product or wants to buy from you then they will let you know and that is a by-product of that relationship. Furthermore, if you develop that relationship then there is more likelihood that further sales will result in the future.
I tend to think that B2B is all about patience. Cultivating relationships requires an almost altruistic approach of giving to the customer in which pressure follow up calls don’t fit in. Too much of what we are seeing today is ‘of the moment’ and focused on the very near short term pipelines of a business… and it shows in methods employed by sales people. It’s a real shame. I am talking to some great people who I really enoy having conversations with but because of such pressurised ways of doing business I am unlikely to speak to them again. Why? Because they followed up and backed me into a corner.
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2 Responses to “The Sometimes Painful Art of B2B Follow Up”
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Hi Nesh,
Enjoyed your article and well, have to admit it’s not allways that pleasant to perform the ‘Follow up’. I agree that B2B is about building relationships and that this can sometimes take a while in time. Nevertheless, next to the time-factor there is the followup-factor. And I claim it’s extremely important. How you do it is another matter. Me personally, I always leave an open door that either has to be controlled by me or by my business contact. It can be simple things or even huge things. But it provides me with the key, that I need, to establish a relationship and to built communication. Hence building business.
greetz,
Harold
Harold, thanks for your comments. I completely understand the time factor and also the pressures that go into moving the sales cycle along and I also applaud your open door attitude which indicates a relationship that is based on mutual flow of information in either direction as opposed to the one way relationship of follow up that really annoys me
Let me give you an example. I had a great sales call(first conversation) the other day on a product that I found very interesting. This was a call that demonstrated the product online and at the end of the call I was given prices on the system that would require a large investment on my part. The follow up call a few days later was essentially a closing action asking if I wanted to buy the system. In a B2B environment when you are asking a client to spend thousands, how do you expect to close a sale on a follow up to one call? I would have been happy to form a longer relationship with that sales person but in all likelihood that person will have qualified me out of their radar and moved on to their next cold call.
That really annoyed me. They had done the hard part in engaging my interest and highlighting need and even in sowing the seeds for a longer relationship but had shot themselves in the foot. And I they did it to themselves.