• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • Advertise
  • Submissions
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Jan 16, 2021
  • Startup
    • Creating a Plan
    • Funding a Startup
    • Franchise Center
    • Getting Your Office Ready
    • Making Your Business Official
    • Marketing Your New Business
    • Personal Readiness
  • Run & Grow
    • Customer Service
    • Human Resources
    • Innovation
    • Legal
    • Operations
    • Risk Management
  • Leadership
    • Best Practices
    • Communication
    • Green Initiatives
    • Open Culture
    • Strategic Planning
    • People Skills
  • Sales & Marketing
    • Advertising and Lead Generation
    • Marketing Innovations
    • Marketing Plans
    • Online Marketing
    • Relationships
    • Sales Activities
  • Finance
    • Budgeting and Personal Finance
    • Payments and Collections
    • Tax and Accounting
    • Pricing Strategy
    • Working with Investors
    • Working with Lenders
  • Tech
    • eCommerce
    • Hardware
    • Software
    • Security
    • Tech Reviews
    • Telecom
  • Shop

SmallBizClub

Helping You Succeed

efile4biz banner
Home / Sales and Marketing / Sales Activities / Tap Into the Power of Timely Sales Follow Ups
Tap Into the Power of Timely Sales Follow Ups

Tap Into the Power of Timely Sales Follow Ups

255 Views

Feb 16, 2016 By Susan Solovic

Recently in this space I shared two simple tips for increasing sales:

  • Unless your prospect tells you directly to stop calling, keep calling, and
  • See yourself as a doctor, not as a sales person.

Today I want to suggest some more tools so you can do the first of those more easily. What we’re talking about are the best ways to follow up with a sales prospect. This might be a follow up email or a phone call.

First let me say that a lot of sales people don’t follow up. The get a prospect on the phone and the prospect says something like, “This isn’t the best month; why not call me in about six weeks?”

Often what the sales person hears is, “I don’t want what you’re selling; don’t call again.”

Frankly, the sales person may be interpreting the prospect correctly. Many times a prospect just doesn’t want to be harsh with a sales person, so he or she just pushes off the negative encounter to another time, hoping it will be dropped altogether.

But if you do follow up in the time frame suggested by the prospect, it can have two very positive impacts:

  • It shows that you are reliable, and
  • It coaxes the prospect into making good on the promise to listen to your proposal at the later date.

After all, it was the prospect that essentially gave you the invitation to reconnect at a later time. If you follow up and make the reconnection, then there is some social pressure on the prospect to at least listen to what you have to say.

Whether you’re doing a polite follow up email or making a phone call, it won’t happen if you don’t have a good system to remind you when the follow up is due. There are excellent cloud-based customer relationship management systems available, but I know that a lot of small business owners are pinching every penny and they don’t want to take on another recurring bill.

If you’re in that group, check out these three email follow up reminder services:

  • com,
  • cc, and
  • Boomerang for Gmail.

All three work in similar ways. Let me give you an example. Say you just got off the phone from a prospect who told you to call him in six weeks. You send him an email thanking him for his time, giving information you think is worthwhile, and promising to call back in six weeks. If you were using Followupthen.com, you would next add this as a BCC: 6weeks@followupthen.com. When the six weeks are up, you would receive an email reminder and could then make your follow up call exactly on time, greatly impressing your prospect.

These services have a lot more flexibility and applications than my simple example illustrates. If you want everyone who received the email to get the follow up reminder, instead of using the BCC field, you would use the CC field. You can also schedule follow ups at regular intervals, schedule sending an email at a specific time, and much more.

Followupthen.com has a decent free plan that lets you use the basic service for as many as 50 emails each month. Boomerang for Gmail has a free plan that offers 10 messages per month, but as its name says, it only works with Gmail. Followup.cc offers a free trial period.

If you don’t want to make the financial commitment to a more sophisticated CRM, one of these follow up email applications could help you stay current with your prospects and customers.

Filed Under: Sales Activities Tagged With: Communication, Email, Sales Strategies

Source: Susan Solovic

Susan Solovic

Susan Solovic

Susan Wilson Solovic is an award-winning serial entrepreneur, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Amazon.com and USA Today bestselling author, and attorney. She was the CEO and co-founder of SBTV.com—small business television—a company she grew from its infancy to a million dollar plus entity. She appears regularly as a featured expert on Fox Business, Fox News, MSNBC, CNN, CNBC and can be seen currently as a small business expert on the AT&T Networking Exchange website. Susan is a member of the Board of Trustees of Columbia College and the Advisory Boards for the John Cook School of Entrepreneurship at Saint Louis University as well as the Fishman School of Entrepreneurship at Columbia College. 

Related Posts

  • 3 Sure Ways to Improve Your Sales Figures
  • Conflicting Figures Show Mixed Email Marketing Sector Going Forward
  • Want Your Drip Email Campaign to Convert? Here’s How

Primary Sidebar

Random

6 Things Every Startup Should Know in 2021

Jan 16, 2021 By Jeremy Bowler

Have These 6 Qualifications to Apply for a Small Business Loan

Jan 16, 2021 By Jamshed Chaudhary

6 Tips for Package and Labeling Management

Jan 15, 2021 By Jamshed Chaudhary

7 Characteristics Of Startup Founders Who Enjoy Life

Jan 15, 2021 By Marty Zwilling

How Working Remotely Could Affect Your Taxes

Jan 15, 2021 By TaxConnections

Footer

About Us

Small Biz Club is the premier destination for small business owners and entrepreneurs. To succeed in business, you have to constantly learn about new things, evaluate what you’re doing, and look for ways to improve—that’s what we’re here to help you do.

  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • RSS
  • Twitter

Copyright © 2021 by Tarkenton Institute, Inc. All Rights Reserved | Terms | Privacy