BUSINESS BASICS SERIES
By Dan Cavalli

To follow-up we must have made contact first. So, what is meant by contact? Contact does not mean the person but rather the method in which you communicate with a lead. My definition of contact is:
“The verbal, physical or printed means made to connect to a lead. The lead can be generated from outbound calls or self generated inbound”.

The “follow-up”.
So what is “Follow-Up” after the contact has been made?  Follow-up is simply the method of:

How and how often you contact the leads that have shown the slightest interest in your product or service.

Note, this is not an article about selling techniques. However, I will touch briefly on the subject of sales to demonstrate “How often” and “How” is related to the follow-up.

“How Often”
In the old school of high pressure selling, to make the most number of sales you had to be prepared to close at least 5 times. My experience in selling is that to make the most sales you should be prepared to close at least 5 times before you can expect a 70% successful sale conversion.

On the other hand, you can also apply the same principle of closing 5 times if your approach is not face-to-face. Let’s say that you make the initial contact by phone or by face to face but your prospect won’t or can’t allow you to close 5 times so you have to follow-up. What do you do?

 These days we have a communication resource that has revolutionized the world. That tool is the Internet and we control it at our fingertips. This tool changes the ratios and conversions that we once relied upon and trusted as gospel.  Instead of closing 5 times if you use the internet and emails you must follow up at least 20 times to achieve the same ratio above.

The main reason we have to follow-up more than before is that whilst the internet is a magic tool, it is also easy for prospects to delete, discard or send your promotion to the junk box. By making our emails interesting, different and of we can entice our prospect to buy. You can then use the same principle for closing but with a mixture of resources.

Why do we follow up so strongly? It’s for two reasons:
1.    People’s circumstances change over time
2.    Buyer’s weaknesses

Let’s discuss each in order of priority.

1. Peoples circumstances change over time
People are not always ready to buy just because you are ready to sell. Sometimes a prospect buys in cycles, seasons or by way of their budget monies. Also instant buying is shunned.

Some don’t like buying just because you have an instant deal. You know the type of hype you see from time to time. Buy now because it will never be back again. While it does work to some degree it leaves a bad taste in the mouth of the purchaser having to buy under pressure.

It is far better to show why it is better buy now rather than later.

2. Buyer’s weakness
This is more to do with the pressure sales person with out the pressure. People will succumb to your wishes in the same way as you give in to persistent requests from your children. They keep asking and eventually you give in.

Dan Cavalli
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