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4 Essential Steps to Sales Lead Follow-Up

Posted by Karen DeWolfe on Monday, December 19, 2011 at 6:56 AM in Business

When it comes to the worlds of sales and marketing, there are always items that we can look at to improve our effectiveness.

In marketing, it may may be that we want to increase brand awareness and acquire more leads. Or, it could be that we want to do a better job of attracting leads that are more highly qualified before they are handed off to the sales team.

But when it comes to Sales, one of the goals that should always be high on our priority list has to do with our follow-up process.

Here are four tips to help increase the effectiveness of your lead follow-up process:

• Do your research: If we want a sales call to go smoothly and turn into a success, we must take the time to learn what we can about each lead before we call them. We don’t need to go overboard — but in today’s world, we can quickly find out key details about most of the people that we may be interacting with. We should look at the data on social networks and in our CRM system and marketing database. That data can help us to deliver a relevant and compelling message to each lead.
• Be ready to get to the point: Are people busier than ever before? While I don’t know the answer to that, I do know that this is true: people have more communication and technology options at their fingertips than ever before! Thus, we must ensure that we can deliver our key message to people in a short period of time. Sales reps should have a catchy “elevator pitch” at the ready so they can quickly start the follow-up conversation and get it moving down the right path.
• Recognize the difference between pushing and being too pushy: While sales does rely on doing what it takes to close deals, it is important not to come off as too aggressive or rude. Nowadays, people are quite apt to air their grievances or complaints about a company on their social networking profiles. If you are outsourcing your sales follow-up needs, or perhaps using someone with limited experience, help them to understand the consequences of their actions during the follow-up process. However, we must strike a balance. We need revenue too survive — and that doesn’t happen simply because we’re nice.  We need to find ways to ensure that our prospects understand the importance of looking at our products and/or services.
• Be happy and passionate: People like interacting with someone that enjoys what they do. They also will be more willing to listen if they think you truly believe in the product or service that you are selling. The tone and content in our follow-up efforts can certainly leave a big impression on other people when they think about our brand.

These are just a few tips to help improve the sales lead follow-up process.

I hope that you find them helpful!

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