How often do you visit leads, only to discover a few months later that they never became a customer? They were not interested, the timing was not right, there was no potential or no budget... the most diverse conclusions are often drawn in the absence of results. And that is strange and unfortunate. The follow-up of a sales conversation is often at the bottom of salespeople's priority list, while that follow-up is crucial. How do you avoid investing time and traveling miles without results?
Hitting the right chord
When you think of sales, you think of striking the right chord with your lead. By sensing exactly where the company's bottlenecks lie, and by clearly substantiating how your organization can help, you win trust.
And trust may well account for 75% of the final award.
However, we must realize that we almost never manage to strike exactly the right chord immediately during a first conversation. Often, a lead conversation is an initial introduction in which you try to break the ice and create the impression that you can bring added value to the company.
Often the absolute need is not yet revealed in an initial conversation, and your lead is a bit of a wait-and-see situation.
But what is the cause of that? Were you well enough prepared, and did you ask the right questions? Don't immediately blame the lead. Why couldn't you fathom the lead's needs? We often don't ask ourselves this often enough, and the lead is lost. What a waste!
We let it run
The conversation is over…are you satisfied? The lead has gotten to know your organization well, knows what you do, and has indicated they will deliberate internally. Then you hear nothing for a few days. And those days turn into weeks.
You decide to email your lead one more time. Even then, no response... It happens all too often. After an encouraging first conversation, a lead bleeds to death.
There can be numerous reasons for this. I believe that, as salespeople, we let things slide too often. Based on previous experience, we assume that the lead is no longer interested. Consequently, at a certain point, we stop following up by phone or email, sometimes entirely wrongly.
Even if you yourself failed to sufficiently uncover the client's needs, numerous practical examples show that you can still achieve success up to two years after an initial meeting.
By continuously positioning yourself as an advisor and maintaining contact, you can preserve trust, ensuring that your lead eventually turns to you once they are ready to make a decision. However, these actions must be followed up consistently!
Concrete tips for follow-up
In this blog we give a number of tips that you can put into practice tomorrow.
1. Provide online contact
The first thing I do after a successful conversation is to establish a relationship via LinkedIn. By inviting your conversation partner(s), you create a digital link that you can use later.
2. Send a wrap-up
Conversations can sometimes be chaotic, and often many topics are discussed. Therefore, send your lead an email within the first few days containing a wrap-up of the meeting. This also signals that you have listened carefully.
In that wrap-up, you can already come up with suggestions and solutions. Be critical of yourself and analyze your questions: are they good? Will I get the information I want with this?
3. Follow up, don't email
An email is easy to ignore. So, call the lead again a few weeks after your conversation to catch up.
In this way, the connection remains fresh and you stay 'top of mind' with your conversation partner(s). Here too, think carefully beforehand about how you approach this conversation, as valuable information may emerge here as well.
4. Make yourself heard
Schedule a few fixed times in your calendar (for example, once a month) to reach out. This could be a nice practical example you send, a new case study, or perhaps a tip.
You can make use of market events to capitalize on. By doing so, you give the lead the confidence that you are keeping a close eye on the market.
Do you have any additional tips of your own? Let us know, we never stop learning!