Is the Follow Up important

So how important is the Follow Up?

So I want to talk to you about the art of follow-up. There’s a statistic out from the national sales executive Association on follow ups.

  • 48% of salespeople never follow up with a prospect.
  • 25% of sales people make a second follow up contact and stop.
  • 12% of sales people only make 3 follow up contacts and stop.
  • Only 10% of salespeople make more than three follow up contacts

Now listen to this!

  • 2% of sales are made on the first follow up Contact.
  • 3% of sales are made on the second follow up contact.
  • 5% of sales are made on the Third follow up Contact.
  • 10% of sales are made on the 4th follow up contact.
  • 80% of sales are made on the 5th to the 12th follow up contact.

That is a very astounding point if you look at it from the perspective of follow-Is the Follow Up importantup. If we don’t follow up properly it’s usually because of a couple of reasons. The number one reason people do not follow up is fear. They allow fear to lead them. They don’t want to bother people which is just basically fear of the people. It’s the fear of calling people or getting a no or the fear of picking up the phone and talk to that person again. These are fears that you have to get over. It’s your job if you’re in business as a salesperson or you’re building a business or anything like that where it causes you to contact people you have to get over it. If you do not you’re going to fail so the worst thing that can happen is you don’t contact somebody and that person buys from somebody else or does not get blessed with your product or service.

Listen you’re in business for yourself you’re doing this for a reason you have to get over the fear. How do you do that? You do that by forcing yourself to make the calls you have to hit a certain point in time when you have to force yourself to succeed. It’s no different than if you’re overweight sooner or later you have to force yourself to quit eating, to go to the gym, to workout, to take better care of yourself. If you’re smoking and you want to quit smoking sooner or later you have to overpower the urge. The fear is very powerful. Sooner or later you have to overpower it. You take baby steps by forcing yourself to make one phone call then two phone calls then three phone calls and then 4 and on and on.
You have to take control. Hey look no book, no self-help Guru is going to help you to force yourself to succeed. So you can go to all the conventions motivational events, I’ve done them all I’ve walked on fire with Tony Robbins, I’ve gone to Millionaire Mind intensives. I’ve spoken on stage in front of thousands of people to inspire and motivate them. But I’m going to tell you right now it’s like a warm bath. If you don’t continue to add hot water to the bath it gets cold. You spend thousands of dollars on an event to get motivated and inspired and probably less than 5% of the people take action on what they learn. You read a book and you get inspired by the book but you don’t do anything in the book to get motivated. It’s like a warm bath you get excited for a moment while you’re at the event and then when you go home and life takes over. The kids, the bills, the job, and the boss everything goes back to normal. You have to get over it. The number one thing you can do for your success is to self-motivate learn how to self-motivate. Sales is about motivation with yourself who is going to close the deal? Either you are going to close the deal with the client or the client is going to close the deal with you. The client’s deal is “no” I don’t want this product. The client’s desire not to buy your product whether they need it or not is stronger than your desire to feed your family for the purpose that you’re in business. So sooner or later you have to figure out how you can continue to motivate yourself to force yourself to inspire yourself to move on. Maybe you have to have a picture of your children in front of you the picture of your wife or your husband in front of you. For some people you have to look at the pain if you do not succeed. If you do not sell this product or service. If you do not recruit this person the life you’re going to live if you don’t make the money. Because the person that you’re selling to is going to be more convinced to not buy your product then you are convincing them that it is a product that they need due to your lack of conviction Your lack of passion for what you’re selling. I don’t care if it’s a girl you’re trying to go out with you’re still selling her on the point to go out with you. And if you don’t continue to follow up with and your desire to have that girl is not as strong as your fear of contacting her you’ve not going to win.

So if you have only a select number of people to talk to the other reason why people will not follow up with people is because as long as they have a list and the person has not told them know then there’s still a prospect. When somebody tells you NO or they buy your product now they’re not a prospect anymore. Some people will not follow up enough so they don’t have to prospect more. Fear of not having enough people to talk to.

So you’re thinking that I don’t want to bother them. I don’t want to call them too much if they wanted it they would have bought it already. All these things are a defeatist attitude toward sales either that or you just do not have enough conviction about your product or service that you’re selling. You have to believe in the product you’re selling. You have to believe that this product is the best thing for the customer. If you do not believe in your product or your service as the best thing for them then you’re not going to be aggressive in the follow up. If you believe that this is exactly what they need to feel their needs, if you believe that this is the best product or opportunity or service for them then it’s your responsibility to follow up until they say yes. It’s your ethical and moral responsibility to call the people until they tell you yes or no. It’s your responsibility when you look at it as a way that it’s your responsibility it’s your ethical duty to continue to follow up because they need your product or service then you’re not bugging them. If you believe in your heart that this is the product or service that they need to fill their needs then why wouldn’t you continue to follow up until they said yes?
So if it’s fear that’s holding you back then you have to work on your belief in your product and service. The fact that you do not believe in your product and service enough to be a little forceful with your client. I’m telling you, you need to find a new product or service that you believe in or you need to do more research on your product or service until you have absolute conviction in your product or your company or service.
In sales you have to learn to close and if it takes 5 to 12 follow up contacts to sell or to close a client then you have to make sure that you’re calling them twelve to fifteen times until you get a yes. And you can’t make it 6 months between each call I don’t know if the stats are right or not but if they’re close enough then absolutely we need to adjust the way that we follow up with people.

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Chief Inspiration Officer
Vincent St.Louis
Fighting the forces of Mediocrity

 

 

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