295 - Why Following Up Is Critical?

0:00Why following up is critical and it is absolutely critical to success in sales. In its simplest format, sales essentially is a process of connecting with prospects, having conversations, and then converting them to a sales, obviously. And all of those are very unlikely to happen without an effective follow-up system. And with respect to that, consistency and persistence is absolutely the key, something I talk about a lot. So I saw an article by Elliot Burdett. He's the CEO of Peak Sales Recruiting. I'm not going to read that whole article to you. And a lot of these are statistics, but pay attention because this is really important.

0:45So let's talk about emails. 40 % of email recipients open emails based on the subject line alone. And he said keep your subject lines engaging, curiosity-provoking, and personal. Absolutely. And then 69 % of those email recipients use the subject line to detect spam. So timing of email follow-ups. Next-day follow-ups reduce replies by 11%. A lot of you will be surprised by that. Give prospects two to three days to think about your email and reply. Waiting three days results in a 31 % increase in replies. Interesting. Your chances of response drop to 24 % after five days. So there's a sweet spot in there of when you're going to follow up.

1:38It's important to look at most people do things that are the easiest for them. So if you're talking about sales, 35 to 50 percent of sales go to the vendor who responds first, and 50 percent of buyers go to the vendor that replies first. That's particularly, and this is more in running a business, but this is particularly important if you talk about following up on estimates, quotes, etc., or just following up in general. Think about all the places you're going to follow up and how you can improve those chances. Okay, so how do buyers feel about follow-up? And basically, 57 % of people appreciate low-pressure follow-ups.

2:26It's interesting. So you don't have to beat them over the head. But you, for instance, if you were following up with a prospect for a board position after three days, let's say, just follow up and one of the things that's really important in following up is you have to usually have a date so if you were talking to a prospect for your board the uh how do you feel about this you'd get an answer back and then if it was that i want to give it some thought okay when can i expect to hear from you and if you get a date then you have something to follow up by and use that as a doofus test. See how people behave and reply to you when they say they're going to.

3:17That's really important with board members, professionals, employees, prospects, business partners. Very few people do that. But if you have a date, then you can follow up pretty effectively. So that's another key point in here. And, you know, it's interesting is that, you know, 70 % of salespeople only send one email, and your chance of hearing back is 25 % if you send more than one email. I think that's a little optimistic, but it's just interesting what people do. If you look at the statistics on follow-ups. Only 3 % of your market is actively buying at any given time. 48 % of salespeople never even make a single follow-up after a cold call.

4:07That's important to remember. 44 % of sales people give up after one follow-up call. And 60 % of customers say no four times before saying yes. So resilience in the face of rejection is certainly key there. And 8 % of salespeople have more than five follow-up touches that are successful. So be in that 8 % of salespeople. So this information was good from Elliot Burdett, again, CEO of Peak Sales Recruiting. But think about what it is that you're doing. Think about who you're reaching out to. Use a CRM and have an effective follow-up system. Boy, is that ever the truth in how you're going to be able to manage it.

5:00Because if you're doing a lot of outreach, you're going to have a lot of follow-ups. Now, if you have a VA, a VA can help you do that, obviously. But think about that as a process. Think about identifying the prospects wherever they are in this business acquisition journey, then reaching out to them. That can be letters, cold calls, emails, et cetera. And then have a system by which you systematically and remember some of these statistics on most effective times to follow up and continue to follow up. And not just once. Remember that 8 % of salespeople that are successful have more than five follow-up touches.

5:42And those can be as simple as just thought that this article might be of interest to you, something like that. Okay, if you do not know the steps in this business acquisition journey process, go over to brucewhipple.com, grab the Acquisition Advantage Boot Camp. That's the best I have. and if you're curious about how to get started with conversations, again, go over, take a look at the free course that's offered there if you want to go directly to that, just brucewhipple.com forward slash free course. But remember follow-ups and get to a system by which that's a regular part of your process and you're going to be surprised at how much more successful you are.