Effective Sales Follow-Up: How Much is Too Much?

When we talk about the idea of effective sales follow-up, what does that mean? It’s effective in terms of making sure that we’re on the same page with the person, making sure that our conversations are moving forward, making sure that their questions are being answered, and ultimately getting to a decision. Are we going forward with this? Are we not? And if so, when is that going to happen? David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today's episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing effective sales follow-up. How much is too much? Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Thank you, David. Such an important question. And again, something that I struggle with. You know, I have a customer management system, and it shows me I talked to them three days ago. And it comes up on my tasks and it says it's time to talk to them. And I find every time I go through this emotional thing. Are they going to think I'm bugging them too soon? And a lot of times I'll say, let's give them three more days or let's give them two more days because I guess I'm not ready to talk to them or I'm afraid I'll be a bother. David: Yes, and you're not alone. Because it's pretty much impossible to know exactly how often to call any one given prospect, let alone all of them. It's not like there's one rule where you say you must call every other day or you must call every three days or every week or whatever your thing is. I mean, there are rules that have been put in place for salespeople to do that, and maybe it's not a terrible thing, but a system like that pretty much guarantees that you're going to be wrong as often as you're right. And so, if you understand that going in, one of the things that I think it's important to recognize is that people are going to sort of telegraph how annoying you're being, or how often they want to be in touch, want to have you in touch. And if you ask them more directly, they'll be a lot more inclined to give you an honest answer. If we make up our minds that we're going to contact this person every so many days, and that person doesn't want to hear from us that often, then obviously we're setting ourselves up for failure. So a lot of times, if we can find out from the prospect roughly how often they would like for us to be in touch with them, and it's easier to do with established clients, where you know them, they know you. With prospects, it's not as easy. But in the early stages with a prospect, we need to be in touch more frequently in order to get to decisions about qualification levels. Are they actually qualified to buy from us? Do they have the need, the desire, the money, the budget, the willingness to spend, the interest? Do they have any of those things? And if we can't determine that in the first conversation, we need to have a second conversation. But of course, their level of interest in that first conversation will also help us to determine, well, how much time should I give this person? And when I think about how much is too much, one of the things that I've seen a lot, and I saw it myself, in my own behaviors in the earlier stages of my sales career, and then in a lot of other people along the way, is that since we can't know how much is too much, many of us in sales tend to err on the side of too little contact rather than too much. And we talked about being a pest in a previous podcast. I don't want to be a pest. Therefore, I'm not going to pick up the phone and call. And the problem with that is that if we're not in touch with them, when they're ready to move forward, then someone else is going to get that business. So we have to find this balance of, yes, I don't want to be a pest, but also I'm not going to abandon this person so that somebody else can get in there and get that business while I've been working to cultivate it over a long period of time. Jay: Yeah, and it could be that depending on what type of product, there's a time limit as well.