I’ve discussed at length the importance of practising your ABPs in selling: Always Be Prospecting.

This runs a bit counter to the notion that the most important habit in sales is to always be closing, but truth be told, if you aren’t consistently finding prospects, you have nothing to close.

Well, I’d like to adjust my earlier points about the ABPs being critical to success. 

Don’t get me wrong, prospecting is the most important activity in sales, but increasingly I come across sales professionals who, often unknowingly, don’t follow up.

They forget to follow up with someone they met at a trade show or event.

They begin outreach to a buyer, but after a few unanswered emails, they stop following up.

They lose a business card after speaking with a potential buyer and can’t remember their name.

When it comes to ceasing follow-up with a buyer, I’m reminded of the Wayne Gretzky quote – “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”

In other words, with so much of your precious time and energy invested into finding and connecting with prospects, how can you reasonably let anyone slip through the cracks?

There are three primary reasons, following the examples above, that sales professionals don’t follow up with buyers.

1. Lack of buyer engagement. Studies have shown nearly 50% of all sales professionals give up after one attempted outreach. This number increases to nearly 70% after four outreach attempts.
2. Forgetting to follow up. Even the most organized sales professionals I’ve coached forget about following up with a prospect. They wind up chasing the short-term sale (who is ready now), versus the long-term opportunity (who may be ready in the future).
3. Loss of information. This can occur immediately after connecting with a buyer or during the process of reaching out. Information such as a business card, email address or phone number is lost. Once misplaced, the buyer tends to move into category #2 above, becoming a forgotten connection.

What’s the solution?

Ultimately, it’s having good CRM software or a method that you can use to track information AND that prompts you to follow up.

I’ve met several top-performing sales professionals who use a combination of Excel sheets, Outlook calendar reminders and notes (on their phone). Low-cost, easy to use, and highly effective.

To ensure you follow up, you need to have a system that works for you and ensure you use the system.

The good news is, if you invest the time to build your system, more sales will result.

… and isn’t that the goal?

Best,

Shawn

P.S. Thank you to those of you who added a review on Amazon for my latest book, The Unstoppable Sales Machine. For those who haven’t, I'd be very appreciative if you could add a review. Use this link, scroll down and select the “write a customer review” button on the left. If you don’t yet have a copy, hit reply and I’m happy to send you one.