better business blog

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Follow Up Up Up

22 February 2015

Selling is like making friends and gardening – they all require effort. If we want to earn money, enjoy the company of others and sniff the bouquet of our favourite roses then we need to expend effort and make sure we take care to take care.

(I’m told there are many types of smelly flowers, other than roses, and as I have no information in my head I will not be doing a ‘Titchmarsh’ here. Other marshes are available too).

When we think about our sales effort, success is likely to be an output of the number of times we follow up with a potential client: A coffee, a second coffee, a friendly email, another coffee, a trial workshop, more coffee, a meeting, a long wait for them to decide what to do, a delicious breakfast, some cake, another meeting, a booked day, a change, a rebooked day, a purchase order – success.

What matters is that we get somewhere good. Time is going to pass whatever we do, so we have nothing to lose by keeping a record of all our potential new clients and making sure we keep on following up up up with them.

When we found our life partner, did we just buy them a hotdog and then get down on one knee and propose? Unlikely. We built a relationship over time and developed a deep sense of trust. Same with sales – we often need to interact with a new client 7 times before they will buy from us, so if all we do is meet them once we have no chance of ever selling to them.

This week we can make a list of all our prospects and against each one write the number of times we have followed them up. We can then look at our list and see who needs a bit more effort from us?

We can all follow up up up and be more successful!

Next week: The Curious Paradox Of Excellence