Do You Show Up or Throw Up with Your Follow Up?

Do You Show Up or Throw Up with your Follow Up?

Last week, I headlined the key attributes of born closers. Of course, I was asserting that, the best salespeople are closers and closes are not born. They are made. And I showed you seven reasons why people don't close the deal. One of was, they don't follow up sufficiently well.

So I'm going to talk a little bit more about follow up because if you follow up, you will distinguish yourself because most salespeople don't follow up.

In fact, the average salesperson only follows up two times.

• Nobody buys usually on the first contact. Maybe two percent of prospects buy, on the first contact,
• 3% on, the second,
• 5% are made on the third,
• 10% are made on the fourth, but the bulk,
• 80% are made on the fifth to the 12th follow up attempt.

Here's the thing.  If you're an average salesperson, you're only phoning twice, you're missing out on 95% of the deals.

So it's not that difficult to be distinct and to stand out in your marketplace. If you follow up diligently.

I ask myself the question, why don't we follow up? Because it's a limiting belief.  It's about the mindset. We think that the customer's not interested. But they’re very incredibly busy people.

You're not just competing with the other people for whatever service that you are providing, you're competing with all of the other people who are trying to get their attention, their staff, their suppliers, other business providers. I mean, they're inundated. 

You will very quickly get forgotten even if you presented a great idea or product very, very quickly, because it just goes to the back of their mind.

You've got to have attention, you've got to maintain presence.  So don't give up. we need to believe if you have that inner conviction that what you offer is going to make a difference and it's the right solution, then you should continue to follow up. It's not the fact that they're not interested, they're not saying no.

I was at a conference with Grant Cardone a week or so ago, and he had a very powerful position on "not interested" in his mind - not interested is a level of interest.  Because before that they don't know you, you are invisible. But now they've heard you, you've pitched something, you've made an offer.

 You've raised the level of attention to, "Hmm, I've listened, but I'm not interested". And that could be, I'm not interested right now. Or it could be that you haven't really hit a home run in articulating how your product or service will make a difference for them. But you should take not interested as a signal of interest.

We need to get this belief out of our head that, oh no, they're not interested. Yes, they are interested, and they will eventually buy something from somebody. You must be present in their mind at the time they're about to make that decision. So just keep on following up.

Sometimes we run out of ideas. I get it. You don't want to keep bombarding them with emails or leaving lots of voicemails. It can be a little bit soul destroying. We need to shake it up a bit, right? We can offer different ways.

I'm going to give you seven different ways in which you can follow up.

Of course, the tried and tested method is the phone follow up.  You should always, always leave a message saying, Hey, this is Mick Holly, we spoke last week.  I really think that we can make a big difference. We're ready to go. I've got my team assembled. We have the best talent in the world. We can get this done for you very effectively, and it's going to be a big success. I'm looking forward to working with you. Give me a call. Or, or check out my proposal that I just sent to you. It's in your inbox. Love to continue our conversation. So leave that message. It will be transcribed in their smartphone and they'll look at their voicemail list.At least they'll see your name and a few headlines. So always, always leave a message. So that's, that's the first way

The thing about phone calls is even though they are an absolute weapon, because people do business by phone,

86% of phone calls go unanswered.

Now, if you press, if you keep pressing right, that means 14% do get answered and you will get through eventually. Those who are persistent and believing, that will get that conversation going.

There is another method whereby instead of 86% of those phone calls, not answered. 95% of your messages get read, and that is the text message. And in this modern age, everybody has their mobile phone right next to them, and you always read the texts.

99% of texts go through and 95% of them get read.

 Send a little text. It doesn't have to be long.

Hey, Mick Holly, just thinking about you, the proposals in your inbox. Take a look at it and give me some feedback.

Nice little text allowing you to follow up. It will be seen and it will be read most likely.

The third method is email.  In the last, podcast around the talents of born closers they always deliver a proposal. You always put something in writing, so they've got something to go back to. They might not buy it today, next week, next month, but all of a sudden they're going to come across it and go, Hmm, now might be the right time to do that.

And at least they've got something that they can respond to.

So email your, your prospects after every meeting.  Send them a nice thank you. The sooner you send that email, the more impressed they're going to be because subliminally you are communicating that you are a responsive, caring salesperson or delivery person.

Oh, we just had this meeting and you know, just 10 minutes after it, I got a nice email and there was a headline proposal in there. Be as responsive as you can because it sends a message about your personal habits and your values. I value responsiveness, I value communication.

You're also educating your prospect that you also expect the same kind of reciprocity. A courtesy. So when you are following up, you expect them to communicate with you. It'll reduce the amount of time where they go into the, the deep abyss where they don't respond and don't answer any of your calls or emails because you've trained them that you are going to be communicating on a regular basis.

You may remember the detective show with Peter Falk as Colombo. He was this detective and he would be talking to the prime suspect and everything would be going well, and Colombo would leave the room and just as he was opening the door to leave, he'd turn around.

He goes, “oh, just one more thing.

And so you can just send an email and say, I forgot in the last email, it was one thing I wanted to mention. Excuse me. And you make another point. So it allowed you, instead of putting everything in one email, you could actually do that in a couple of emails with a, with a P.S.

If you see things in the news or the headlines. Hey, I was thinking of you and I just wanted to copy you on this piece of intel that I discovered.  If you really want to be sophisticated, we'll talk about this in a, in a different podcast, but you could put those people on a, some kind of autoresponder or newsletter list, so they're getting something from you, every week and you're never really out of, out of their mind. So that was the third method email.

The fourth method is you could use good old snail mail and send postcards. I've had a lot of success with writing postcards.  I commissioned a cartoonist to, to design 12 cartoons that were relevant to what I'm offering.

Then for my top 100 prospects, I send them a postcard every month so they get something from me. It's a humorous postcard. It's got a cartoon on it I write a little note on the back of the postcard. Very, very powerful because who, who actually gets notes or postcards anymore, it makes you stand out.

Number five is you could pen them a little note, a handwritten note on a napkin or a sheet of paper. You just sent them a note. It's like a love letter. I was thinking of you, and again, it makes a huge, huge impact.

If you just wrote one handwritten note per day. That's five in a week. Doesn't take you a very long time. Maybe you work 40 weeks. That's 200 handwritten notes sent out to your key people. You'll forever make an indelible mark in their in their minds, and they will remember you. And when you do call or you do text or you do follow up, they're more likely to answer that call.

Number six. The power of video. You've been gifted with this wizardry called a phone. You can make movies on there very, very simply. You can send a little video by text, so you can be looking into the phone saying,

“Hey, Steve a really wanted to emphasize a couple of points in my proposal. I, I think the risk management that we put forward will show that we can get this project done effortlessly, and that's detailed in the proposal. It's in your inbox. Looking forward to connecting with you. Call me if you've got questions”. 5, 10, 15, second video. Very, very personal. They will see it. You're standing out. 

The seventh method is you can see them on social media. They may be on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and if they do post something, comment on their posts.  If you've ever posted anything on social media, you're always fascinated by who's commented and whether those comments are meaningful, not just a smiley face or a thumbs up, but you've genuinely read the post and you make a comment that would reinforce and agree with the message or provide some insight that would be valuable.

That's a huge impact.

So those are the seven ways.

1. phone.

2. text.

3. email

4. postcard.

5. handwritten note.

6. personal video.

7 comment on their social posts.

Seven ways that you could follow up without seeming to be pushy, but you are there present. 

Those seven things could be done over a couple of weeks or a couple of months, but you're in their mind, they know that you are thinking about them, and you are communicating that you care and that you want to follow up.

So don't throw up with your follow up, show up and when you show up, you'll win. That's all for this week well, we've come to the end of another great episode.

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See you next week.