While most sales professionals know that it takes at least five contacts to convert a prospect, the figures show that majority don’t make it past two. That should serve as a strong reminder to any salesperson who is having trouble. Of course, there are a variety of reasons why salespeople fail to follow up with prospects in order to increase their chances of making another happy customer. One of the reasons might be that they have no process in place after they discover a new prospect, they have too many difficult clients, or they are just too preoccupied with following up on too many prospects who waste their time.
However, it appears that the main issue is a lack of a prospecting process. A salesperson should have a method of communicating with their prospects that has been proven. Real estate agents, Financial advisors, and insurance providers that deliver value on a regular basis are excellent examples. It may appear to be a difficult task to remember, but any decent CRM software makes it feasible. Even without a CRM program, with today’s cell phones it’s as simple as telling Siri to set a reminder on your calendar. You may outline the steps you want a prospect to take with the help of good prospecting software. I like to use the W.I.N. method of notation structure in my CRM. List what was discussed, any insights you or the customer gain from the conversation, and based on those insights, what are the best next steps. With the help of a decent CRM software, you can keep things moving along in your pipeline and maintain your prospecting cadence.
In addition to putting in notes outlining your prospecting efforts, a prospecting cadence that has worked well for me is the 3-2-4 sequence. After every interaction I want to follow-up within three days, over the course of two weeks, I have reached out four times. This has proven to work really well for me. Naturally some prospects may need more contacts, but this is a great rule of thumb for me and following this method will put you ahead of most your competitors. After four contacts and no measurable forward progression on the prospects behalf has been taken my conversations turn more towards disqualifying the customer.
While consistent prospecting is half the battle having prospects that take up too much of our time or too many prospects who aren’t your target client is still an issue for many sales professionals. One thing that every salesperson should do is clean up their prospect list to identify just those prospects that have a lot of upside potential. You will be effective in bringing in more sales to your organization if you combine this with a strong prospecting process that you can follow.
Below is a link to a slideshare titled: Ultimate Follow-Up Checklist to Boost Sales
Feel free to check it out and keep it handy next time you’re about prospect for your next dream client!
Catalyst Consulting 