Once you’ve made business prospects, it’s not a perfect time to sit back; Now is follow up time! About 70% of your appointments will come from efficient lead follow up. If you’re not following up effectively, you’re losing a lot of potential income.
There are a umpteen number of acceptable ways in which you can follow up with prospective clients. Different methods work with different situations. Some are listed below:-
# 1. Keep an updated database: The database should contain the business name, the contact’s title and full name, the phone number, the mailing address, and an email address. This makes it easy to follow up with business prospects. Your database should feature all prospective clients, ex-clients, and regular clients. Exploring notable lead databases for potential integration can amplify your success rates significantly.
# 2. First follow up within 48 years: Be sure to provide business prospects with your contact information, including your full name, phone number and an email id. This allows interested individuals a way to get in touch with you.
# 3. Don’t be pushy: Reading your customer’s mind is no easy task. There’s a fine line between persistence and harassment.Don’t get disheartened, by disconcerned consumers they are probably contemplating. Keep your pleasant conversation going, it is very important to do an effective follow up.
# 4. Be precise and effective: Don’t waste your prospect’s time by droning on and on. Also, if possible, provide some additional value during your follow-up call. This may give your prospect a reason to choose you instead of a competitor.
# 5. Content: At the end of the day it is your content that has to be viable to accelerate business prospects. Content could be directly sold or various devices in support; such as: video, blogs, references. So a follow-up where you say “We can do that for you!” is unlikely to work, but a follow-up where you say “Here’s a blog post I wrote on the subject” can work. Again, you’re demonstrating that you’re trying to ‘inform’, not ‘sell’ to them.
# 6. Email Vs Phone: Some sales-people start with an email; others prefer to just get on the line and talk. There are pros and cons to both approaches. Let’s start with the “shooting over an email” approach, though. Email is visual but usually are trashed. If you’re comfortable jumping to a phone conversation, you could get to the coveted connect stage sooner. The best solution to getting in touch with your prospects, then, is to use your phone and email as a complement to one another.
# 7. Get an effective Cloud based IVR telephony: Interactive Voice Response(IVR) is the common automated menu system heard when customers call into businesses. With technology taking leaps by the minute Most IVR systems include mailboxes available via their cloud telephony web interface. Real estate listing services, for example, would use these virtual mailboxes to create MLS directories that connect buyers to recordings about specific properties, freeing up sales agents to follow up with the most serious prospects.
# 8. Social media: We’ve made calls, sent emails but don’t brush aside the power of social media. We are in the technologically advanced times of all. Nearly all of us now have a LinkedIn account. Connecting with that person on LinkedIn helps expand your network ,but don’t make the big mistake of sending a “Boilerplate” request. The stock “I want to connect with you on LinkedIn” is a big no-no! It shows a lack of attention. By far better to write a short note saying where you met and why you think it’d be useful to connect.
Don’t forget to utilize pinterest, facebook, google plus, twitter too!
Getting more referrals for your business should not be difficult or painful. Follow these steps and you should start seeing positive results in your referral marketing efforts. If you are not taking care of your customers then I promise you that someone else will. Until next time, make marketing your mission…everyday!
This article is contributed by Aakaanksha Singh. She is a professional Blogger, columnist and an author.
