The Follow-Up: How You Can Instantly Double Your Sales

Updated January 4th, 2019

You meet an awesome prospect, a potentially high paying client and it couldn’t have come at a better time. Your funds are getting low, bills are due, and you need to make some money NOW.

You ruthlessly follow up with everyone that has ever contacted you about using your services, and try to close the deal. You have to “Make things happen”.

After meeting with this potential client, you blew your chance… it had nothing to do with the meeting or phone call. It has nothing to do with the value you offer and probably has nothing to do with your prices either.

Sound familiar?

Do you know why this is happening?

It’s because you smell bad.

Deodorant and drenching yourself in cologne isn’t going to help, because it’s not body odor they can smell from 1,000 miles away with a phone call. It’s desperation, and nothing stinks more than desperation. 

In this post, you will learn:

• The art of the follow up
• How to not be pushy, or come across as desperate
• How to boost your conversions
• How to setup a follow up strategy
• And Much more.

How To Double Your Sales With The “Art of the Follow Up”.

There isn’t anything sexy about following up with clients, nothing that can make it seem dreamy, and you definitely don’t want to take the lazy way out and attempt to outsource the tasks of following up. After all, these are revenue generating tasks, the ones you SHOULD be wanting to do!

Most people like to learn about how to open up with a cold call, how to use different styles of selling to close the deal, using different scripts for different targets, etc.

Well, here’s something that most of the sales gurus will never tell you. All of that accounts for less than 1% of your sales. You want to learn about one call closing? Cool, too bad that only happens in THIS industry maybe .1% of the time unless it is an inbound call.

Here’s the truth, 65% of your customers will buy between the 3rd and 7th follow up call. 20% buy between the 8th and 15th call. If you’re REALLY good, then 5-7% will buy within the first 2 calls. 

You get the picture?

The overwhelming majority of “closing” won’t happen on the first couple of calls. Those first calls are simply a matter of qualifying your prospects, separating the studs from the duds.

The selling begins in the follow up.

Common Mistakes People Make In The Follow Up Process

Before really diving in here, I’m going to show you a few mistakes people make. You might be making them right now, because of what you’ve heard from some marketing guru, or product creator.

Mistake 1 – Internet Marketing Tactics Don’t Work on Offline Business Owners. 

Don’t be this guy…. For many reasons.

It’s easy to think that marketing is marketing, and it works no matter what the medium or platform is, but that’s not true. Even when it comes to online marketing and social media, there’s a huge difference in the approach you take on Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, Instagram and other platforms. There is no one size fits all plan.

One common mistake people make over and over again when trying to make sales to clients, is that they try to create a false sense of urgency.

While the IM gods have their dime sales and urgency timers, or say there’s only “3 copies left”, it might work for their audience. Hell, even some of you fall for that stuff.

When it comes to selling to business owners, however, most are not going to be persuaded by a false sense of urgency. If you tell them you only have spots for 3 new clients, they don’t care. They’ll tell you, okay, well let me know when you’re available again. Or, they’ll just use a competitor.

They aren’t stupid. You’ve been marketing to them, they know you want to make a sale, and pretending that you’re so in demand that they might miss out on the chance to work with you… well, they just don’t care because they know you’re desperate. Trust me, I’ve been through this and have made the same mistakes.

Mistake 2 – Don’t Lower Your Prices or Threaten to Raise Them in Order To Get the Sale

Sometimes your potential client truly doesn’t have the money or can’t justify paying you what you’re asking for. Giving them a deal, usually doesn’t end very well but at least I can understand it in that case.

The problem here, stems from mistake #1 where you create urgency.

Often, what people will do is they will tell the potential client that if they buy by the end of the week or whatever date they make up, it will be X amount… if they wait longer, it will be higher.

That’s a big problem.

When you do these things, it isn’t assisting you in the sales process. It’s the desperation that is trying to manipulate someone into buying, and desperation isn’t easy to hide.

Using these tactics, isn’t part of selling. These tactics are what you use when you don’t want to sell.

The fact is, the sales process is exactly that, a process. Don’t allow your desperation to sabotage you.

Now, I’m not saying you have to completely abandon the strategy of offering a discount. In fact, I offer discounts for my 12 month agency coaching program, but the difference is I’m not using that as a strategy to convince an existing lead that it is “now or never”.

One thing that has worked in the agency world is when you’re using your marketing to promote discounts to get people in the door. They know it isn’t a sales tactic ultimatum, they just know you’re running a sale. No different than big box retailers, jewelry stores or even weekly circular ads for grocery stores.

Just use it sparingly.

7 Tips To Setup A Follow Up Strategy

In order to close more sales, you need to have a proper plan in place for follow ups. Otherwise, you’re just sitting there waiting for the phone to ring, or losing out on opportunities because you were either too aggressive, or too passive.

1.) Efficient Follow Up Strategies Begin With Lead Generation

What does lead generation have to do with creating a follow up strategy?

Everything…

Desperation happens because you place too much importance or hope on any single lead. Reading this post, it seems like follow ups are the main problem because of desperation, but it isn’t. It’s only a symptom of a larger issue. That issue is not having a consistent strategy to continue bringing in more leads.

When you have a consistent source of leads being generated, setting up a good follow up strategy is essential. On the flip side, if you don’t have a consistent source of leads, it is your follow up strategy that will suffer, because desperation will take over.

2.) Never Let a Lead Slip Through The Cracks

Now that you know to never force a lead out of your pipeline with stupid mistakes like a false sense of urgency or demand, you also need to know that you never should let them slip through the cracks…EVER.

What I mean, is by NOT following up, or thinking they’re just not interested (even though they never said that).

80% of sales people GIVE UP after the 3rd contact / follow up call. 80%. 

The majority of YOUR sales will happen after the 3rd contact.

You must continue to follow up until the lead tells you to go to hell or just says no… and even then sometimes it makes sense to get back in contact further down the road.

After the 5th contact, that’s when you truly start learning about the needs of the potential client, and that’s where the real selling begins. 

So, before you even implement a true strategy, you need to know that your eyes are focused on the path ahead, and you’re going to keep going no matter what.

3.) You MUST Use a CRM

A CRM is a necessity for anyone in sales.

An excel spreadsheet is no longer acceptable. A yellow legal pad, not acceptable!

When you have a new lead, you need to be able follow your process. Missing a follow up call by even one day, or one hour can be disastrous.

My preference has always been Nutshell CRM. I like how easy it is to use, the advanced data you can see so you know what to expect out of your pipeline.

A friend and coaching client of mine, Martin, who you’re probably familiar with from his guest post here, has suggested to a few people to try out pipedrive.

Since I’ve always been a nutshell guy after going through numerous platforms and hating them, I stopped looking for alternatives. I decided to give it a look and see how good or bad of a suggestion he made. I was pleasantly surprised. Pipedrive is a little less extensive as Nutshell, but much easier to manage. Great example of awesome UI in an industry that seems to not care much about that.

Anyway, the point here is you need to have a system for your follow ups, to remind you who to call, when to call, and have notes on the lead so you can sell to them with a specific purpose.

4.) Implement Lead Nurturing With Your Follow Ups

Follow up calls are fine, but if you really want to boost your sales process you should be implementing existing content for your potential clients.

If you haven’t started a blog, you should do so right now. See why…

A follow up strategy isn’t just based on picking up the phone and seeing where they’re at… a GOOD follow up strategy consists of personal contact, along with a type of indoctrination of your company, and provide direction with different types of content.

Your chances of closing the sale greatly increase when you’re educating the potential client along the way.

People want to know who they’re doing business with, why they should choose them, why it will help, etc.

When you implement a lead nurturing strategy along side your follow ups, you’re taking the pressure away from both side. Not only does it take pressure away from selling, it takes pressure away from the client, feeling that they’re just being sold to.

You’re creating a better business relationship, before a sale ever takes place. You’re building authority, trust, and actually providing value to the client before they pull out their wallet.

A multi-touch strategy, via email and phone is a great way to stay in front of your prospects without annoying them to death with calls.

5.) Creating Your Follow Up Schedule

You should have a plan on how your follow ups will go. Before creating your schedule, here’s a few important notes.

Get the potential lead to agree to let you call again. 

When you’re on the very first call, you should have a reason to call them again. Calling to see if they’re ready to buy, isn’t a good enough reason.

That’s why it’s important to plan the reason before you ever talk. If you have someone interested, make sure you have their email, tell them you’ll send some information over to them along with your website. Before getting off the phone with them, ask if (3-4 days from now) is a good time to call back and go over any questions they might have. They’ll usually say sure… if they say, “no, I’ll call you back”… then they’re probably a dead lead.

Follow up, exactly when you say you will. 

This matters, even if they’re not available at that time, it builds a bit of rapport and trust that you do what you say.

I’m not a fan of leaving messages when cold calling, but this isn’t cold calling, and you should always leave a message. Don’t call back later that day, always give a 2 day break when someone doesn’t answer your call.

Example Follow Up Schedule:

To make this easy to follow, I will use a “+” sign for symbolizing the amount of days that go between the previous form of contact.

1st call – agree on a follow up, usually 3-4 days in the future. If it’s a VERY hot lead, then set it up for the next day or two, use your best judgement.

+ 3-4 days – follow up call on what they thought about the information you sent. Did they get a chance to check your website? Did they look at pricing? Do they have questions on the process and understand how what you offer can help them?

+ 2 days – 1st email from your autoresponder, answer a few common questions about what you do. Don’t try to sell through the email. This is more of an indoctrination / educational purpose to assist in selling by building trust.

+ 4 days – Next phone call follow up. Call with a purpose, research a little bit about the company, look for quick fixes for them, give them a tip to list their business on thumbtack, get on nextdoor.com, tell them to setup a FB page.

+ 2 days – Next Email follow up. Continue to answer questions via your content.

+ 3 days – Next phone call follow up. The purpose of this call, ask if they have looked further at the information you provided, see if they took some of you advice given on the previous call… try to learn more about them as a business owner, and what they truly want / need.

+ 4 days – Email follow up. Case study, “How One Landscaping Company Dominated His Local Competition With 0 Effort”. Something attention grabbing, explain your process in a language they can understand. It’s educational, but it also sells. It gives them real world examples and why they should buy from you.

+ 3 days – Phone call follow up. Find out why the lead hasn’t purchased from you or anyone else. Find out the concerns, worries and fears. Address them.

And so on…

I recommend setting up at least a 5-7 email sequence for your auto responder. If you have a longer sales cycle, you may need to add more, and modify the days in between.

6.) Don’t Assume They Remember You

This is extremely important, and not just applicable to the follow up examples. This applies to pretty much everything that requires human interaction. Always remind the lead, who you are and why you’re calling. Don’t expect them to remember you.

I had a sales guy that always expected that people knew who he was. It took a long time to drill into his head that he should remind them who he is, when they last talked and why you’re calling. “Hey Mr. Lead, this is so and so, we spoke last Wednesday and I told you I would give you a call today, is this a good time?”

Business owners are bombarded with calls all the time. They get calls from numerous customers, networking groups, other business owners, telemarketers trying to sell them web design, SEO, merchant processing, D&B membership, trade associations, etc.

Business owners are capable of having the Monday funk, every single day of the week!

Reminding them who you are, when you talked, why you’re calling, takes their guard down and allows you to have a conversation. It stops them from just listening to you, and actually remembering you, which is a crucial step in the sales process.

7.) Persistence Closes Deals… Harassment Doesn’t.

I remember a struggling sales person, stinking of desperation, had a really good lead. It was going to be one of his first sales so he was antsy, and definitely desperate.

He was pretty good at building relationships, except they were always with the wrong people. Having a gatekeeper on your side, really isn’t a big deal despite what people say. Having the son of the owner interested doesn’t mean the owner will open the checkbook.

Anyway, he did a good job nurturing the wrong people and always said it was a hot lead. After listening in to some of his calls, I realized the lead was almost the same as a cold contact. He only talked to the owner once, out of 20+ calls. After telling him to focus on the owner, he listened…

He proceeded to call him 10 times a day for a week until the owner blew up. (Note: I must say though, he did some good detective work, finding his cell phone number along with his home phone number. This sales person had a 20 minute conversation with the guys wife)

I ended up emailing the owner and calling once to apologize and managed to save the deal, and close it a day later.

Being persistent is one thing. Calling numerous times a day isn’t persistence. It’s harassment, and stupidity.

Always be persistent and see the path forward. Don’t hammer your leads with phone calls though, it looks desperate and really kills any sort of trust and authority you have built for yourself.

Final Thoughts

One of the biggest difference makers when it comes to sales, is the follow up process. High performers and mediocre sales people are almost the same in every way except when it comes to how they follow up.

I’m not exaggerating when I say that 90-95% of you AND your competitors have a really crappy follow up process, and many of you will make some of the mistakes I’ve mentioned in this post.

Getting this process down properly, and excelling at the follow up process, is the difference between living paycheck and paycheck and really generating a higher level income.

If you excel in this area, that is likely the biggest differentiation in this industry and among other industries as well.

Hope you guys close more deals with this info!