For one's marketing efforts to be successful, it is more than just gathering up names so that an e-mail list can be created. Contacts are good, but to be able to make your sale, you need to have a real follow-up program.
Art Sobczak, in one of his TelE-Sales Tips, commented "my experience is that many sales reps have no clue where they are in the sales process with a majority of the people they are following up with."
They call their target and leave a voice mail message or send e-mails and hope something will happen, he said, actions he compared to running on treadmill-lots of activity, but you don't go anywhere.
"Repeated messages with no value puts you in a position where you're viewed as a vendor...a salesperson whose goal is to sell them something. The more you call to 'just check in,' the more the image of the 'stalker salesperson" is solidified in their mind," Sobczak said, adding that you are also wasting your time and money with these calls.
What you should be doing, he said is to gauge the temperature of the prospect and get a snapshot of precisely where you are with them. "I've found that it's always best to let the prospect tell you their perception of the progression of the sales cycle and what the next steps should be" said Sobczak, president of Business by Phone, Omaha, Neb.
Ask such questions as "So, where are we right now?" "Where do we sit right now?" "How far do you feel we have progressed to this point?" "How close are we to making this happen?" "What are the next steps?" "What next?" "What needs to happen on your end to move forward?" "How do you see us proceeding?"
The next step, he said involves getting a commitment that the prospect will do something and you'll do something as a result of the call.
"On your follow-up calls it's important to remember that your prospects are likely not doing pre-call planning like you. Therefore, you can't assume they are in the same frame of mind as you when your call arrives. Actually, you should assume they might not even remember you. Then you'll make it a point to briefly review where you left the previous conversation," Sobczak said.
He concluded, "Remember, activity is not accomplishment. Worse, it could be costly."
