|
Follow Up or Die! Your Accountant Will Love You if You
Follow Up!
by Fred Raley
It took me over three years to learn why I had been successful and also why
I had been failing so bad in sales. It all boiled down to one thing: My
ability and determination to follow up with prospects and with new customers
and associates after their initial introduction to my product line!
Why so long to do a "duh" you might ask? Very simple! My trainers and
mentors did not know to follow up either! This is part of the reason that
salesmen have a very high failure rate. People do not understand marketing
and thus the strategic importance of following up on prospects.
Read this statistic about the importance of following up from an association
of professional salesmen, the National Sales Executive Association. Their
statistics show that the most sales by far are made from the 5th through the
12th contact! Here is the data they have compiled about on which contact
sales are made:
2% of sales are made on the 1st contact
3% of sales are made on the 2nd contact
5% of sales are made on the 3rd contact
10% of sales are made on the 4th contact
80% of sales are made on the 5th-12th contact
(For MLMers only: Why do I mention "sales", you ask? "I'm in MLM and we
don't make sales, we just educate prospects, point them to the info, etc..."
Don't kid yourself!!! You are selling yourself, your company's products and
your company or you are not having any success in MLM. Sales is not a dirty
word; it is what we do to convince prospects that they need our product,
company, or services. Sales is exactly what you do in MLM if you are
successful. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.)
Realizing that, don't you think it would be good to go out and learn how to
be a good salesman? Your mentors are providing that for you right now so
listen up. (They are aren't they? If not, better find a good mentor as going
it on your own in any sales business is suicide!) Like in any education
process, it is good to go out and READ more about what successful people do
in your chosen field to make the success they have. People like Tom Hopkins,
Zig Ziegler, Jim Rohn, A. L. Williams and others are all expert salesmen who
are now in the training mode of helping others understand the techniques
that got them where they are today.
So, back to the statistics of the National Sales Executive Association. 80%
of all sales are made from the 5th through the 12th contact! Wow! Are you
beginning to see why your closing rate is so low?
Here is another example of why repeated exposure is important. How many
times a day do you see or hear about Coca-Cola or McDonalds or Pepsi? I know
there is a statistic somewhere on this but I'm betting it's in the dozens or
higher per merchandiser. You hear Coke ads, you see them on billboards, you
see them in magazines, on TV, on radio, and on and on.
Why? You already know you like Coke. You already know where to buy it. You
already know the cost or nearly so. Why does Coke pay millions per month in
advertising costs? One reason and one reason only: To keep Coke on your mind
as often as possible so you will be more likely to crave it and therefore
buy it. They want you to think of Coke as often as humanly possible!
You should consider marketing your products or services to your buying
prospects the same way. It's war out there where everyone is vying for part
of the consumers mind. You don't have to play dirty to win but you MUST play
the game HARD consistently, persistently and with the utmost determination
to succeed.
That means getting your message in front of the prospect repeatedly over the
course of time from your initial introduction to him until he tells you to
stop sending information. This may seem drastic, but who will be sending
your prospect information if you are not? Guaranteed it will be someone else
who will be there when the time is right for the prospect and you will have
lost a sale because you failed to continually stay in the prospects face.
"I don't have the time to do that!" you say.
"YOU MUST" I say!
You can either do it manually with pencil and paper records. Or, you can do
it with some sort of database reminder system. Or with a folder system
either manual or electronic. Or, you can let technology do it for you!
I vote for letting technology do it for me! One system that I use takes my
prospect from the initial "Send Info" request through infinite follow-ups!
All automatically. That's right! Automatically, out of my hands. The system
just lets me know who requested info and when and it does the rest for me.
http://www.post-master.net/rs/SuccessApps will give you a free demo.
Another system I have does similar things but adds an "excitement" factor to
stimulate the prospect to come back for more info.
mailto:SuccessApps@getresponse.com and watch what happens. It becomes a
marketing follow-up monster!
(WARNING!!! The autoresponders and the site above have "Sales Letters" in
them. "Oh my God! Not another article that markets someone else's products!"
YES! It HAS to promote something for you to see what a GOOD marketing
system/campaign looks like. If you can not stomach seeing a marketing
campaign for my product line or are afraid it might make you buy something,
then don't go into this site. I have been accused of scamming folks when I
put the above paragraphs in this article above so I wanted to warn you about
what you are getting yourself indoctrinated on at that site ahead of time to
let you opt out of learning how expert marketers do their marketing.)
The result from that a/r sequence and the website email sequence:
Prospects call or email me; "I'm ready to buy! Tell me what to do next!"
Read what one of the autoresponder sites says about follow up:
Q. How much would you expect to increase your sales if you made 4 or more
follow-up e-mail communications?
A. 173% (E-Marketing Today).
Q. If you doubled this communication rate, could you expect even greater
returns?
A. Many customers are showing increases of over 400%
My mentors think I'm a master salesman. WRONG! I'm a master educator and use
systems to do it for me. I could never find all the time and organization to
followup with hundreds of prospects like automated systems can. All I did
was write the initial copy of the outgoing emails (actually, my mentors
wrote some of them) and load them up into the system and told it how far
apart to space the emails.
BUT! Don't think technology will do it all for you. You can
close another 20% or more of your contacts with personal contact. People buy
"You" as much or more than they buy a product or service. Personal contact
makes you into a real person instead of a simple email address or
Fax-On-Demand piece of paper. I most highly recommend calling
your prospects. I don't care if you are good on the phone or not. Don't try to
"sell" anything on the phone, don't make up a canned pitch like some insurance
salesman or mortgage broker. Just strike up a conversation and see what concerns
they have. Answer their concern(s) if you can or promise to get back to them via
phone, fax or email with an answer. Always be polite and honest and you will be
amazed at how many folks respond positively to you. Use your mentors for
three-ways until you get the hang of it. It will add an invaluable measure of
success to your business.
Finally, you MUST have a good message, good product, good prices and a better
deal than everyone else your consumer has seen. If you follow up religiously
with crummy messages, poor grammar, writing that is not client-centered and
benefit-focused, you will NOT see more sales no matter how many times you follow
up. A lot of that "better deal" is YOU too but your written message must be
powerful and totally client-centered. If you are not a good writer, find a
seasoned copywriter to help you work up the hard-hitting pieces you will need.
So, what are the rules here?
1. Follow up from 5 to 12 times to get in that 80% bracket.
2. Let technology do the follow up for you.
3. Call your prospects on the phone and make a friend.
4. Use client-centered, benefit-focused copy to get your message across.
By the way, depending on what you are selling in products or services, almost
everyone is a potential customer most likely, if not now, then in the future. Do
you think it makes sense to keep in contact with them? If you said YES, you are
right! How can you do that without pitching them on your product
they don't want or need now?
a: Start a periodic ezine and follow up weekly with useful information!
b: Run them through this Q&A to see if they are potential candidates:
http://www.homebusiness.to/Success4U
Remember; the fortune is in the follow-up.
Your accountant will love you if you do follow up.
You will be out of business if you don't.
©1999-2001 Fred Raley
Fred@FredRaley.com
703-730-1079 - Northern VA
http://www.FredRaley.com
Next |
