The first six(6) months of 2010 are gone never to return. Maybe some of you right now are wiping your hand across your forward muttering some beneficial or not so beneficial words under your breath.  For some the results (achieving sales targets) have been better than 2009 and for others worse.  This ending begs the [...]

If you’ve been reading any of our earlier posts on follow-up you’ll have seen how follow-up for the sake of follow-up isn’t a particularly effective strategy – and especially not if your approach is to say “I’m just calling to follow-up…”.

Nonetheless, follow-up is a vital topic. According to the Gartner Group, almost 70% of leads are mishandled in some way. So great follow-up will give effective salespeople a huge advantage over less rigorous competitors.

The key is that follow-up needs to be pro-active and planned. For example, if you are following up progress on a proposal or bid you should already have pre-agreed your follow-up activities with your prospect the last time you met or submitted the bid. So there should be no need for the desperate “I’m calling to follow-up on…” communication. As another example, in Follow-Up Before You Start on this site, Tibor Shanto describes an excellent follow-up system for leads using email marketing.

I’d like to go into a bit more detail on a highly effective lead follow-up system I use in specific situations. It’s not complex, and it doesn’t require any sophisticated technology – pen and paper will do.

One of the most effective lead generation methods for salespeople of all types – but particularly for professionals who work in local markets is networking. However, most people we meet at these events tend to fit into the “might do business with, but might not” category. For most of us, we don’t have time for lots of face-to-face meetings or a “follow-up coffee” with people in this category – we have to reserve our in-person follow-ups for people highly likely to give us business themselves or refer business to us.

And it’s the same in reverse. Many people who we would like to build a relationship with may not immediately see the value in building a relationship with us. But we can significantly increase our chances of this if we follow-up effectively.

But typically, professionals are very bad at following up initial contacts made at networking events and turning them into useful leads. Most follow-up tends to fall into one of three categories:

• Do nothing. A valid strategy if the contact is definitely not a potential customer or referrer – but in reality used mainly by people who simply don’t know better and are hoping that somehow the contact will remember them later when an opportunity arises.
• Send a meaningless email. “It was nice to meet you, if you ever have need of our services in future don’t hesitate to call me”. Impersonal. No value-added. No lead.
• Put them on a standard mailing list. The poor contact then gets a regular monthly advert sent to them that’s not tailored to their needs and is probably irrelevant.

So what’s the alternative?

The best follow-up from a networking meeting is one that adds value to the recipient. Perhaps some thoughts to help them, or links to useful resources. The more it’s clear you’ve thought about them and how to help them, the more likely they are to classify you as “someone to trust”. If you’re in the sort of business that lends itself to this, one of the best things you can do to really add value is to have a series of reports or articles on relevant subjects available which you can send to contacts who express interest in those areas.

Of course, in order to do that, you need to understand what might be useful to them. And that means that you need to ask them questions during the event (and remember or take note of the answers) to identify what would be helpful. Understanding their business challenges or goals is critical to this.

If you can’t add value straight away tell them you’ll be looking out for them in future – and specifically name what you’ll be doing. For example “…I found your ideas on growing your business through relationships with accountants in your local area really interesting. If I identify any accountants who fit the bill in future I’ll be sure to pass on their names to you”.

Then you need to turn that initial follow-up into a regular nurture programme. This could be via your CRM or email marketing system. Or it could be a simple pen and paper based system if you don’t have a huge contact list.

One way to do this is to keep a list of all your “interesting and important” contacts with notes on the sorts of things that would be useful and helpful for them – taken from your initial discussions at the networking meeting. Review this list monthly so that your radar is always active and on the lookout for how you can be helpful. For high priority target clients review this weekly and build in time to your schedule to actively look for resources to help them.

In this way, you can tailor a series of follow-up communications with prospects that they will get value from, and actually look forward to receiving. And more importantly, they are much, much more likely to result in genuine leads and sales than the typical “…if you ever have need of our services…” email.

Popularity: 29% [?]

The one area that people seem to ignore the need for consistent and thorough follow up is early in the process, the area we refer to as above the pipe. Most sales people tend to have a very Glengarry Glen Ross approach, give a lead one try, and if you do not get the desired result, toss the lead. Some baseball fans are more open minded, they take the three strikes and out approach, they don’t toss it till after the third try.

I understand that sales people would rather be selling than prospecting, sad that some even see these as different things as opposed to part of the same process; but if your customers don’t come to you like they do at Burger King, you need to prospect.

The raw material for creating prospects is leads, the way to convert leads to prospect is follow through. In these days of genteel euphemisms, our marketing friends have coined the expression “lead nurturing”, which is exactly correct.

Depending who you read, it could take a minimum of six touch points to gain the attention of a lead enough to engage them in a conversation that will determine if they are in fact a potential prospect. Depending on the number of prospects you need to hit your number, that’s a lot of follow up, that’s a lot of planning, that means you’ll need a process.

We recommend and use a process we call T – C – E:

Touch – Everyone we meet (contextually), is added to our monthly newsletter data base, The Pipeline, they have the opportunity to safely unsubscribe, but we also make an effort to have interesting articles relevant to all involved in B2B sales.  This way at least once a month, and at times with special announcements each of these leads sees us, our name our logo at least 15 to 16 times a year.

Thanks to the tools built in to e-mail marketing tools this also give us great visibility into what diffe3rent people are reading, what is of interest, what is not.  Specifically to follow up, we reach out if someone demonstrates strong interest in a specific article.  A few years back, I saw that a lead, one who I met with six months prior, and had called about 60 days before the article appeared, seemed very interested in an article on cold calling.  How do we define interested, he accessed the article 18 in three days; I followed up with a call, “Tom how you doing?” I asked; he said “you know Tibor, I was just thinking about you.”  No kidding I thought.  We met, we did the program, and we are still meeting on an ongoing basis.

Contact – With each lead we devise a plan to contact them directly over and above the regular e-mail campaign cycle.  These are usually calls, but at times direct e-mails, special invitations to events directed at them specifically as opposed to broad based generic mailings.  This dictates that you do rank your leads, we use a simple 1 – 2 – 3 ranking, with one getting the greatest focus, 2 next, etc.  It is important that you have clear definitions for each of the rankings, and depending on your business, you could have prospect that rank as 1 for one service, and maybe rank as a 3 for another product.  The clear definitions will allow you to move leads up and down the rank scale and make sure that your best shots are always visible.

Since we sell to sales organizations, our 1 ranked leads get a direct call – Contact – every three months, since most sales organization seem to live their lives quarterly, (some these days monthly).  When we contact with them we have a specific objective, getting a face to face meeting; so we know what is a good outcome from the follow up, and what is not.  If we do get the appointment, and it leads to a conversation they get moved to the Engage category, and enter our pipeline management process.  If they do not engage, we reassess their ranking, and place them back accordingly.  Or sometimes not, if their circumstances had changed to the point where they are no longer a viable lead, they get put back in to the general pool, and start the process from zero.

Engage – Engage is the most straight forward of the three, if the appointment is good (we have a mutually agreed on next step), they, as stated above, they move into the next phase of the process, the pipeline.  If they do not progress through to a transaction, they are either removed from the lead pool for specific reasons; they are put into the general pool for re-engagement at some point in the future, or placed back into the Contact phase.  They always, with rare exception or if they have been removes from the lead pool, continue to get touched and receive our newsletter and related monitoring.

While this may seem laborious, it is not, you can systemize and automate most of it except the monitoring, which allow us to be aware of trends and other things that benefit us in other ways.  But a thorough follow through regime at the point above the pipe gives us and those clients that adopt is a great jump on sales, accelerating the velocity of the sales and shortening their sales cycles, not to mention a great deal of insight that pays other dividends.

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We all have similar things to say about this topic thus far, and with the way things are going these days, sales people should listen. I have yet to go on a rant over here at the SBU. For those of you who know my personal blog, you know I have my moments of utter frustration with the mindset of the day to day salesperson. The rants can be sharp and since this is a different set of readers, I will do my best to keep this to a respectable tenor.

Follow up, as a mindset is critical to great salesmanship. It is the art of keeping tabs on the plan, managing objectives, and growing a partnership between buyer and seller. It is a meaningful excercise, but only if it has meaning.

Follow up, as an entry statement seems to be the whole reason MOST SALES PEOPLE MAKE SECOND, THIRD, FOURTH, or WHO KNOWS HOW MANY CALLS!

“Hi, this is Karl and I was just following up on…blah blah blah.”

You know what I say to people that lead this way?

“Oh, you were just following up? Well, I am tied up right now, why don’t you just follow up in a few weeks.”

The interpretation; you do not even deserve my energy to tell you to go away. You have become part of my grand experiment into how long you will make futile attempts.

So now that I have cleared some steam from the vents, let me turn things around and explain what good follow up is:

1. It leads with action items from a previous call. Even if it was something as minor as the promise to call back, or finding the answer to a question. This is the beginning of a follow up call.
2. It continues by confirming again what you have learned and ensuring that plans have not been altered.
3. It moves to the next objective or agenda item and ends with either more to do and a plan of action.

This is so simple, yet most people do not take the ten minutes to review their account, recall the conversation, ensure they have answers, know the next objective, and drive this follow up towards another sale.

Get the phrase out of your vocabulary and the mindset into your process.

Popularity: 11% [?]

Image by hartboy via Flickr

I had just transitioned from inside sales to my first outside sales position where I was selling some high end estate planning vehicles in the home. My clients all had net worth’s in the 5-10 million ranges, and appearance was everything. After a week or so it became clear to me that my lifted Jeep was not going to work in this environment. Besides the fact that it did not send the image I wanted to project it got wretched gas mileage, was bitter cold to ride in the wet Pacific Northwest weather, and was just not very comfortable. After a short conversation with my wife we decided we wanted to get a V6 extended cab Ford Ranger 4×4 that would meet both my lifestyle and career needs. Anyways, all that to say I NEEDED a truck, and I know what I wanted, so after work I dropped by the Ford dealership to go get a truck. I told the salesman what I wanted and he showed me everything on the lot EXCEPT what I told him I was looking for. Frustrated I ask him if he even HAD anything like what I described to him and he said not right now. Knowing there were two other Ford dealers within 20 miles or so I left him with some simple instructions: Do a dealer search for me and call me tomorrow with prices and descriptions of three or four trucks like this and I’ll be back tomorrow night to drive two and buy one.”

I felt that I had given a sufficient buying signal and waited all day for the call… It never came. So after work I went back to the dealership and was quickly greeted by my “Salesman” from the night before. I asked him “Did you do the search?” And he said no, he had been busy. Based on the activity I saw both times I had been there I assumed that meant “I have been smoking by the door all day”! Still I was busy and really wanted this to be easy so I gave him the SAME instructions, and headed off to see my wife.

I thought for sure he would do the search this time, but still no call, undaunted, I stopped by after work and there he was “busy” by the door again. With a look of disbelief he greeted me again. I ask if he did the search today and again he said he had been very “busy”. He assured me he would do it tonight and call me the next morning, but I told him that’s ok, I guess I’m not really “That” serious anyways and got back in my Jeep and headed 15 miles down the freeway to the other Ford dealership. About two hours later, I stopped back by the first dealership and met my salesman again in my new truck and let him know I didn’t need that dealer search anymore.

This story is sad because it’s true… but this guy lost a sale because he failed to do his follow-up work. He was too “busy” waiting for the easy sale that he missed the REALLY easy one right under his nose. With all of the CRM tools available to us it is silly to make this kind of mistake. A simple reminder in his to-do list, PDA, or CRM system would have reminded him to make two calls worth a grand or so to him.

Remember when it comes to follow-up is not just about filling the pipeline, it’s also about keeping what’s in your pipeline moving to the next level of commitment. Don’t let YOU be the reason you fail to close the deal.

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I 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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I hate the term “follow up” as it applies to sales. I admit I use the term occasionally, but I prefer to use a different term. Here’s why:

follow-up

As a good friend of mine says, “Words mean things.” She’s right. One’s choice of words to describe an activity can provide insight into how that individual views that activity.

I think the choice of the word “follow” is a lousy one when selling. As salespeople, we aren’t “following” anything when we follow up (or at least we shouldn’t be). Salespeople must take the lead, not follow. If you haven’t yet closed the deal but need to contact your prospect to continue the selling process, the last image I want you to have in your mind is the image of you “following.” Puppies follow; small children follow others when they play “follow the leader.” But salespeople need a different word that describes what they should be doing in these sales situations. And that word is “LEAD.”

I think the following definitions of the word lead from dictionary.com are very appropriate to the situation of a salesperson getting in touch with a prospect to continue the selling process:

lead • verb: to go…with to show the way

lead • verb: to guide in course, direction, action, opinion, etc.

lead • verb: to influence or induce

lead • verb: to have the directing or principle part in

lead • verb: to act as a guide; to show the way

lead • verb: to go first

lead • verb: to take the directing or principle part

Don’t the definitions above accurately describe what you’re doing, or should be doing, when you’re “following up” with a prospect? Compare the appropriateness of the definitions above to the definitions below, again from dictionary.com, for the word follow, as in “follow up”:

Follow • verb: to watch the development of

Follow • verb: to come after in sequence

Follow • verb: to accept as a guide or leader

Follow • verb: to conform to, to comply with, or act in accordance with

Follow • verb: to come next after something else

Follow • verb: to come after a result or consequence

Follow • verb: to watch the movements, progress, or course of

I’d rather have my salespeople “show the way” rather than “watch the development of” the prospect’s situation. I’d rather have my salespeople “guide the prospect in course, direction, action, opinion” rather than “to come after in sequence.” I’d rather have my salespeople “influence” the prospect rather than “accept [the prospect] as a leader.” Wouldn’t you?

So that describes half of my complaint with the term follow up as it applies to selling. The remaining portion of my complaint is with the word “up.” Your goal when “following up” is to move ahead, right? You want to move ahead in the selling process, correct? You don’t want to go up do you? You want to move the process ahead, forward, closer to a closed deal. Do you agree?

So let’s say what we mean and mean what we say. Instead of “following up” with your customer tomorrow, may I suggest that you instead “lead ahead” your customer?

Take the lead. Move ahead!

dont-follow-lead

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A common occurrence in the media sales business is the follow-up.  That event in which a seller must re-contact a decision maker and ask the status of the sale they are trying to consumate.  Many sellers find this event an awkward moment – filled with anxiety and trepidation.  I’ve often heard a follow-up phone call handled like this:

Decision Maker:  “Hello, this is Jim.”

Seller: “Hi, Jim, it’s Mary from WKOO radio.”

DM: “Hi, Mary.”

Seller: “Hi.  I was just calling to follow up on my submission for the Oscar Mayer business.”

DM: “Okay.”

Seller: “Well, um, how’s it looking?”

DM: “Pretty good.  I should be done with the buy any day now.”

Seller: “Okay, good.  That’s great.  So, I should be hearing back in the next day or two?”

DM: “Yes.”

Seller: “Great, yeah, okay.  Thanks very much.”

The seller lacks smoothness in part because this type of phone call doesn’t seem to have a natural beginning.  The seller is actually trying to find out if she is going to be bought.  That is, did she make a sale.  Unfortunately, in this example she did not determine the status of her station on the buy.  Although, she will be hearing back from the buyer in the next couple of days she doesn’t know what she is going to hear.  Perhaps, the opening gambit should have been:

Seller: “I was calling to find out if I convinced you that my radio station deserves to be on the Oscar Mayer business.”

But, many sellers would find this too forward or fear that such boldness would be punished by the decision maker.  Consequently, they dance around the issue as shown in the first scenario.  If the first scenario isn’t direct enough and the second one is too direct, what then is the best way for a media seller to follow up?

The best way to follow up is to offer some additional information of value to the process.  That is, start the conversation by telling the decision maker something that you have just learned that makes your product or service offering more desirable.  For example:

Seller:  I just came out of a sales meeting where the topic was the latest ratings.  As we had hoped, our new morning show is off to a great start.  I knew you would want to know - considering that you are still working on the Oscar Meyer business.

Decision Maker:  That is interesting.  Thanks for the call.

Seller:  Sure.  By the way, what is the status of the buy?  Have we made the cut?

Another example:

Seller:  I just read in the trades that Oscar Mayer is looking for places to serve their new bologna.  That works out nicely for my station since part of my presentation was sampling opportunities at elementary schools.

Decision Maker:  Yes.  I’m sure the client is going to look favorably on your promotional ideas.

Seller:  Cool.  Are there any other t’s to cross or i’s to dot before I can tell my manager that we’re on the business?

For sellers who have difficulty with the follow-up, I always recommend that they eliminate certain expressions from their repertoire.  I ban the following expressions:  “Follow up”; “Following up”; “Checking back”; and ”touching base”.  With those expressions off limits, sellers have to figure out the value that another phone call from them brings to the process.

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