Follow up is the follow-up of a lead or client, which is carried out by sales professionals. Through the follow up, professionals improve their results and accompany the development of the lead until its conversion. If you want to know how to do it, stay with us!
When there are no organized processes, the follow up can be exhausting and exhausting, both for the manager and for the potential client. It is normal that, during the sale, the seller hears “yes” and “no” from potential customers. The difference is in their way of acting in the face of a refusal.
Follow up is a connection, that is, a mechanism that guarantees the evolution of the lead in the stages of the purchase. For this reason, it is important to understand this concept and learn the best way to implement it in your routines.
In this content we explain, step by step, how to build a well-structured follow up.
The importance of a follow up is what defines it
As we told you at the beginning of this text, the follow up is the accompaniment of a lead or a client. This contact can be made by email, phone, LinkedIn or other means of communication.
Despite being an important stage for sales conversion, many professionals ignore it because it seems complicated, unnecessary or invasive. But, some studies reveal that permanent contact is what makes sales happen.
Data disclosed by confirm that 80% of sales are only made after the fifth contact and that they can be made up to 12 before a sale is made. On the other hand, the study also showed that 48% of sellers do not follow up.
The number of contacts may seem high, but when it comes to sales, mainly in the B2B field, it is normal for the number to be higher and that several contacts are needed before obtaining a definitive answer.
The good seller is the one who uses follow-up to show the customer that your brand is really interested in delivering a solution. With each new contact, the professional must make it clear that he recognizes the problems of the potential client and that he will be able to solve them.
That is why carrying out a structured and regular follow-up is so important. If you ignore this stage, you will waste all the work you and marketing have done. In the end, if the contact reached a seller, it is because at some point your product really interested him.
Learn, step by step, to do a follow up
To carry out a good follow up, it is necessary to design structured processes and follow some important steps. Here are some tips.
1. Plan the processes
The first step in designing a successful follow up is. Only with good planning can you effectively track and identify each stage of the prospect.
To start, analyze your contact routine and try to identify a pattern or average for all situations.
For example, if your product is a personal finance course and, on average, it takes a potential client 2 months to buy it, you can try to reduce that time with a greater number of contacts during a month.
At first, it will be necessary to try different communication channels, schedules and approaches. In addition, you must document the processes.
Currently, you can do it with spreadsheets or even with customer relationship management systems.
2. Build a good frequency flow
The flow of frequency refers to the different follow ups carried out with the same potential client, by maintaining a close relationship and guaranteeing the evolution towards the next stage.
Therefore, the flow must have a certain regularity and content, so that each contact is decisive in the closing of a purchase. It should be noted that each buyer persona has their own decision profile. For this reason, the seller must know the customer very well so as not to be too invasive or distant.
There are clients who enjoy exclusive attention and are willing to listen to you. In other cases, the potential client is a very busy person and contacts by phone can annoy him.
If you do most of your contact via email, it’s a good idea to build automation flows that automatically nurture the prospect. For example, in a first frequency flow email, it’s important to remind the prospect of what problems they’re having and how your brand can help them.
If you make the contact by phone, you can highlight at the end of the conversation a specific data for the next contact or a data for a final answer.
Remember that the focus of the contact should be the potential client and not yourself. So, do not spend the mail or the call talking about your brand or your product. If you do, the prospect may lose interest completely.
3. Create an effective communication channel
Creating an effective communication channel is an important element of follow up. To achieve this, you must know your audience very well. For this reason, you need to know what the best channel of communication with your buyer persona is.
You can find out by applying formulas and performing tests. In this way, the effective channel will be the one that allows the client to commit, respond and listen to you.
Choosing the right communication channel is important because it will be the means to create a connection and for the potential client to start trusting you. At the end of the contact, you can ask the lead how their experience was and if they suggest any changes. This transparent will help you generate real links.
4. Use good mental triggers
The are stimuli that help people make decisions, something that can require a lot of effort. Normally, before deciding, the brain considers several situations that can interfere with the result.
This is why mental triggers are so important. They help the potential client to make a decision easier and faster, ignoring several problems and fixing the solution on one.
For example, a widely used trigger is scarcity and urgency. When the brain is faced with the possibility of a purchase, it tries to balance the real need to acquire the product, its value, how it could help solve a problem, among other considerations.
When the salesperson activates the trigger for urgency and scarcity by saying that the discount will only last for the next 24 hours or that the product is the last available, the brain understands that it must ignore all the problems, in short, it is the last chance it will have. to acquire the product with those conditions.
Therefore, a good salesperson studies and knows several mental triggers to use at key moments.
5. Use content marketing strategies
The sales area is closely linked to the marketing area, since both work together in the prospecting, nurturing and conversion of the lead. Therefore, knowing the strategies of the can differentiate a seller.
First of all, a good seller knows how to add value to his product and to what he is offering. In this way, every contact between the professional and the lead must be unique and different.
Therefore, never send standard emails to get responses from the lead. Try to be professional, mention the name of the potential client, a particular situation and offer details of the negotiation. With that, the user can feel the need to answer the email so as not to leave you unanswered.
In addition, it may be that at this stage the lead still has some doubt regarding your brand or service. So, using materials, such as ebooks and blog posts, in lead generation can help you convert faster.
6. Choose good times for the follow up
Follow ups can be inconvenient if the salesperson approaches the lead at bad times. For example, nobody likes to receive a sales call at 7 am or 8 pm. If the contact is made by phone, it is essential that business hours are respected.
In the case of email, there are no problems, because it is the potential client who decides what time he will check his mail and respond to messages. But, it is preferable to send this type of content first thing in the morning, because that is when the lead begins his work routine and defines his goals for the day.
7. Use your success stories
There are cases in which the potential client knows what worries him, understands how your product or service can help him, but still does not fully trust that your brand is the best option.
At this time, the best strategy you can use is to show success stories. With them, you can give your service more credibility and show your buyer persona that your brand has already solved a problem like theirs before.
Sometimes talking nice about yourself can seem pedantic, but if it’s a client doing it, no problem.
8. Make a summary of the contacts and send it to the lead
The follow up process is a ladder that must be built little by little with each contact. So if you do most of your contacts over the phone, try to write down the main points you discuss with the lead and mail them after the contact.
In addition to creating a document for further analysis, the lead himself will be able to review the points when he is ready to make a decision.
This habit will help you make more direct and accurate contacts, since there is nothing more unpleasant than a salesperson who contacts you without even knowing what you need.
9. Define intervals between contacts
As we have already shown, creating a good follow up is identifying and organizing processes. So, defining correct time intervals is also a decisive element to close a purchase.
For example, after the first contact, it is normal for the seller to take longer to make the next call. Many times, the lead is not the only person responsible for making decisions or needs to know more about the benefits of the service. After the second contact, the other calls may be more frequent, approximately 5-10 days.
The follow up is changing the sales scenario
With all the information that we have given you in this post, you should already know that those who use the follow up correctly do not see it as the bad guy, but as a decisive ally in the life of the seller.
This type of follow-up must be relevant and generate value for the potential client. Thus, you will be able to retain them from the first purchase.
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