Follow ups - Create Top of mind recall and close more Sales
Updated: Nov 24, 2021
If closing more Sales is something that is important for you, then you need to up your follow up game. Regular Follow ups help put your Brand in front of your Target audience at regular intervals and gradually get embedded in the conscious mind there by creating a Top of mind recall.
As Data suggests most Sales Professionals operate in Isolation and don't involve marketing to be a part of their Follow up strategy. Yes, follow ups need a clear strategy and this is something which most companies don't have.
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First and foremost most Sales professionals are in the habit of doing manual follow ups and believe that this is a job of Sales Teams. Secondly as data suggests most sales people give up after 2 follow ups and only 8% of Sales people go upto 5 attempts. The Real magic usually happens between 5th to 12th follow up.
If you are someone who is serious about closing more Sales then you need to take help of your Marketing team as well and create a complete customer Journey map which is a mix of Email & telephonic follow ups and touch points on Social. These touch points would usually aid in creating a brand recall and help you establish your Brand in front of your prospects.
What would this workflow look like from my perspective, firstly i would only keep one part of this series Manual and that is telephonic conversation and even for that I would set a reminder in my workflow. The Optimum work flow would need a high level of automation and a tool like Active Campaign for building a complete workflow.
The trigger for the workflow if i was setting it up would be, once the prospect is entered into CRM (again Active Campaign for me) and a Tag prospect is added.
First Email is sent to the prospect which could just be a Thank you with a few link aimed at helping them understand what makes your Product / Service worth considering. These links would obviously bring the traffic back to the Website so that we can track how the Prospect is engaging with the content. (This is trackable since a web script of Active Campaign is embedded on the website)
Depending upon how the person has engaged with the first email a split happens here, If he/she opened the email but did not click any links, a new email is sent differently worded but with links again. If they did click on the links, depending upon what links they clicked and pages they visited another email is sent out. This is all helping in creating not only Touch points but Brand awareness.
At the same time once they click on a link they are automatically added to an Audience on Facebook / Instagram to show them Sponsored content (that is why you need Marketing to be a part of it to map this journey and create relevant Content)
The prospect is now also being targeted on Social space and this is gradually nudging him/her towards your Brand by putting it in their awareness. At the same time what actions the prospect takes on your Website is also being recorded. Based on the actions further emails are triggered or prompts are set. for example, if the prospect has visited your Pricing page or Services page twice, he may be needing some help, a prompt here to the Sales person to call up the client and ask if they need any help could help you speed up the process.
You should ideally have a sequence of 7-8 Emails, 2 Calls built into your work flow along with Social Targeting and this should continue till you see some response. In my 3 decades of experience, by the 7th tom 9th follow up I have usually known whether this prospect would convert or not and at that stage a Tag can be added which could be Client if they convert so that they can be taken out of the Email sequences, targeting and re-targeting or what I put is cold lead, which puts them in a list of cold prospects to share 1-2 updates a month on email but keep on showing them Sponsored content on Social.
This workflow has helped me and my clients close a lot more in terms of Sales and also with all customer data recorded in CRM (Active Campaign again) one had a very clear idea of what Journey the customer took and what kind of information to share with them in the future.
Every one we prospect is not ready to become a client this red hot instant, some take less time some take more time, at the end in my experience if the product is the right fit and your content has been able to explain this to them, there is a greater than 50% chance of them converting or sometimes even if they don't convert of them recommending you. It is your persistence and follow up regime married to online social targeting that tilts the odds in your favour.
If you need help in building customer Journeys that convert then let's have a chat. who knows we may be able to curate some amazing experiences together.