As a salesperson, how many leads have you opened and never closed? For the average salesperson, the closure rate is less than 10%.
Let me show you a simple yet super-dope strategy for following leads to a desirable close. Follow me!
Selling is pretty much like “toasting” your babe. She’d never walk down the aisle with you at first encounter. David Cummings showed in 2012 that about 71% of buyers buy because of relational factors such as trust, likeness, and demonstrated knowledge, while just a paltry 29% buy because the product is great. Let’s be honest; the first-time buyer doesn’t even know jack about your product. That’s the reason they take some time before they decide to buy.
To be sure, strong relationships in business and life are formed over time across multiple interactions. Yet so many people invest tons of time and energy into going out to events, meeting new people, and making impressive social media posts, and then doing practically no follow-up at all to build the relationship from there.
Wrong!
If you halve the leads you generate today and spread the time for lead generation to follow-up, your closure rates can go up immediately by as much as 200%. Yeah!
By simply following these 6 rules on follow-up, you will close 200% more deals.
The first contract I got this year was from a leading Nigerian realtor; these were the exact words of the MD when he handed me the check “I like your persistence.” In all honesty, he couldn’t tell if I could deliver value.
Follow-up is ALWAYS a winner.
Here’s my strategy for it.
The Healthy Mind-Set
For your follow-up system to be effective, you need to work out a few things in advance.
The first is to get your mindset right for follow-up.
When most people think of follow-up, they think of chasing opportunities or trying to catch up with potential clients after a meeting to see if they’re ready to buy. Well, that’s not bad, but it doesn’t work!
The channel of effective follow-up includes two things: value addition and continuous demonstration of expertise. As you follow up, these must be your two objectives. Without fail, it will land you that amazing deal.
Each interaction should add value to the customer as well as reinforce your own expertise. The period between first contact and eventual sale is critical for decision-making. You must make certain that you are well-positioned enough for the customer to call you when he’s ready to buy.
If the only time you follow up with clients and prospects is to chase them, nag them, or otherwise try to get something from them, then pretty soon they’ll come to dread your calls and emails. They’ll screen you out and try to avoid you like the plague. So, rather than only ever following up to ask if a potential client is ready to progress with a buying decision or any other form of nagging that runs the risk of annoying them, we’re going to follow up in ways that they find useful. That way, they actually look forward to hearing from you. They open your emails and take your calls. VALUE!
Ask the Customer
I often get the question, “What is the best means for follow-up?” Well, only one person can answer that question—the customer. Take the moment of your first encounter to ask three important questions: “How would you want me to follow up?” and “What is your timeline for response?” In the second instance, you could say something like, “I will usually revert with respond to an email request within 24 hours. What is the timeline for you?” To the first question, the usual answer is “email.”
You should also ask about their interests. The most important part of your follow-up is sending stuff the prospect finds relevant and useful. If someone cares so much about football, for instance, and you send them very useful stuff about pet care, they won’t appreciate it a lot. It is very important, therefore, that you ask early in your engagement with the prospective customer about their interest, business, and non-business interests. If someone is really a passionate Man-U fan, a controversial news item about an upcoming game can get them to call you. Purpose achieved!
Qualify Your Leads
You don’t want to have to waste a lot of time following up on prospects that have no prospects. As salespeople, people lead qualification comes to us rather intuitively. Over time, we develop that sixth sense that has the capacity to deselect low-potential leads. We are right 50% of the time, or maybe 60%. The problem with that is the interference caused by our emotions and feelings. For instance, you can disqualify a prospect because he spoke rudely and then conclude, “He doesn’t like me, and so he won’t buy.” Meanwhile, the guy was just having a bad day and could turn out to be a great customer. Someone might be shabbily dressed, and then you conclude this is not the kind of guy who’d be able to afford the Bahamas holiday package, which you sell. And I knew a number of customers in my days as a commercial banker who had hundreds of millions in deposits but frequently dressed poorly. You should develop at least 5 rational and fact-based criteria for qualifying a lead as viable. Do not dwell on perception.
Another thing you want to know is if you’re talking to the right person. At one time, I was prospecting a leading HMO and talking to the MD, believing it would make my job easier. I was shocked to find that the critical decision-making is made by a much junior manager. The MD is almost always certain to act on his recommendation. I ate the humble pie and had to route the deal through him. Even when you know the senior guys, it is better to go through the right guy. It is your job to find out who he is.
Categorization
My recommendation is to group the people you meet into different categories or levels of follow-up. There will be some really high-potential clients you’ll want to follow up with frequently to make sure you’re top of mind, and other less likely prospects that you might only want to keep in touch with infrequently, just to keep the relationship alive on the off chance something might come up. You can put them in three groups: A, B, and C.
“A” group should consist of hot deals. persons who are likely to buy in about a month or 2. “B” can be a group of people who will buy a little later, say 3-6 months, but you are certain of their capacity and need for your solution. Then C should be those who may not be buying in the foreseeable future but nonetheless have some prospect.