Suffering from Follow Up Burn-out?

Recently I was asked the following question by a member of the It’s Time to Sell community on Facebook:

The dynamic seems to have changed now. Once, a follow-up call would be politely answered; now, most are ignored. How often do you follow up, if at all, once you have been ignored? Let’s leave the discussion of common courtesy for another day.

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The question got me thinking about follow-up in this modern age of email and social media. Specifically, here are some of the realities about buyers:

• Buyers are making many more decisions than they used to. One could argue that we are all suffering from decision fatigue. With the trend towards niching of products and services and customization of product offerings to buyers’ specific needs, decisions have become complex and overwhelming.

• Buyers are being bombarded by information from all directions. Gone are the days of the buyer shopping from a catalog and calling the sales rep when he or she is ready to buy. Now, buyers are bombarded by social media (articles, videos, slide decks, recommendations, and so on), sales funnel web sites, email autoresponses, phone calls, postcards, mailers, and other media.

• Buyers want to engage with salespeople later in the process. They want to educate themselves first and then engage with a live human only when they have hit a wall and have questions.

I began to think about how entrepreneurs and sales professionals have or have not adapted to the changes:

• Are sellers taking advantage of the opportunities provided by social media? Social media can improve the flow of prospective buyers into the pipeline and weed out those who are not interested or who will ultimately chew up lots of time kicking tires.

• Are sellers ignoring buyers’ desire to educate themselves before they talk to a salesperson?

If you’re a seller, you should consider these questions.

In this article, I present my views about how to deal with prospects who are avoiding you. The reality is that we need to improve our awareness and our intuition regarding follow-up so that we can avoid falling into the trap of wasting time on the wrong prospects. We need to focus attention on those that our solution fits.

The Buyer Needs to Earn Your Time

I like to engage in an active process in which I as the seller and my buyer accept action steps at each stage. Obviously, the appropriate sales approach will differ for every seller, because no two products or services are alike. But the key point in a buyer earning a salesperson’s time is that the buyer agree up front to be engaged in the process of making an educated decision. At the end of each phone call (or face-to-face meeting), the buyer and the seller each should take ownership of an action step that moves the process along. The prospect could agree to watch an online video or read an email from you. Once he or she has agreed to take such an action, your follow-up is about moving the process on to the next phase. If at any point the prospect becomes hesitant (for example, he or she stops returning phone calls or emails), simply ask a closed-ended question: “It appears that we’ve hit a wall. Do you want to get around the wall and proceed to the next step? Or, should we make adjustments to the process?” The key to the success of this sales approach is that the seller make it easy for the prospect to say, “I’m not ready” or “I’ve decided to go in a different direction.” I make my prospective client aware early on that I am not in the game of selling something that is not a good fit.

Obviously, how you communicate will sound slightly different, because you should show your own personality. However, follow-up does not have to feel like nagging and neither salespeople nor buyers should be disrespected. Communication should be open and mutually beneficial right out of the gate. As entrepreneurs and sales professionals, we need not be afraid to move on to the next prospect in the funnel.

Remember: Our job is to find people with problems that our solution solves.

What are your thoughts regarding follow-up? I would love to hear them in the comments below.

Relevant reading:

Is Cold Calling Still An Ideal Method Of Generating Sales Leads?

Can A Salesperson Build Relationships While Still Being Assertive?

How To Develop Confidence As A Seller

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