Lead Follow-up and Why It Is Important to a Small Business

SalesMarketingProcesses
Written By Mollie Watkins

Lead Follow-up as a Component of the Sales Process

What is a Lead Follow-Up Process?

A lead follow-up process is an important part of an organization’s sales process. The lead follow-up component of the sales process ensures continued follow-up until the sales person gets a yes or actual no – an actual no is when the prospect says I don’t want your service/product ever – not when the prospect can’t be reached (because the sales person only called 3 to 5 times) or when the prospect says – I can’t do it RIGHT NOW. With only 2% of sales finalizing at the initial touchpoint, your lead follow-up process is crucial for the remaining 98% of your leads. 

Lead-follow up doesn’t mean being pushy, demanding, or harassing customers and potential customers. We’ve all had an experience with a salesperson where we’ve felt that way, and it’s not fun, nor does it promote a desire to do business with them. A good lead follow-up process leaves the customer feeling respected, valued, and with a desire to WANT to continue doing business with you. 

 

What is in the Lead Follow-Up Process?

A lead follow-up process must include specifics of what/when/where/how/why to help sales people understand, what lead follow-up means really (perspective is reality), when follow-ups should be made after the initial contact and for how long, where to follow-up (call, text, email), how lead follow-up will be completed, and why it is important. 

When all parts of the process are in place, the salesperson can follow up confidently (leading to higher success rates), and the customer feels as if they matter to the business and that their time is not only respected but also valued. 

 

How to Have Successful Lead Follow-Ups

Knowing what lead follow-up is and having a successful lead follow-up are two different things, and as mentioned above, can be the difference between keeping customers happy and feeling cared for and them feeling harassed and annoyed. Below are some tips on how to have a successful lead follow-up process:

 

Be Consistent

As the title of this process suggests, you are following up with leads because they were unable to continue the sales process when it first began. A consistent lead follow-up process will continually touch base with that prospect until the timing is right. That timing could be next week or 3 years from now – that’s why we must keep all prospects in the sales pipeline and continue follow-up until the prospect is ready!

As small business owners know, sales is a numbers game – there is a formula or a specific number of calls or visits that need to be completed to close on a sale. What many salespeople forget is that lead follow-up should also be treated the same - a certain number of touches or contacts are needed to convert a prospect into a customer.

As shown in the meme above, 48% of salespeople never follow up with a prospect, while only 10% of salespeople make more than three contacts. However, 80% of sales are made on the 5th to 12th contact. These numbers are not surprising; many salespeople try to contact someone a couple of times and then move on to the next person.

That lead came in because of marketing tactics that your small business is running and paying for – each lead has a cost and hopefully a return on investment in the long term.

 

Make Notes of Contact

A great way to track when leads have been contacted so that your team can avoid both forgetting to contact a lead or contacting them too many times too soon is to make notes of when leads are contacted, or notes on when would be the best time to contact them. 

An example would be a salesperson enters a calendar reminder or adds a reminder in a relationship management tool to call the prospect within 24 hours of speaking with them. After that touch point, (assuming contact was made) the sales person puts a reminder to follow-up with the prospect in 3 business days (email), then 7 business days (text if opted in), then 2 weeks (call), 4 weeks (email), 2 months (text if opted in), 4 months (text if opted in), 5 months call 5 times during the month, and so on.

 

Automate the Process Where Possible

In today’s age, many aspects of sales processes can be automated to reduce time and resources while maintaining smooth operations, and your lead follow-up process is one of those aspects. An example of automating a lead follow-up is when someone visits your business’s website and provides their email or other contact information. This triggers an automated message to be sent to them after the initial visit. 

For an example of how automation can be helpful and save money, let’s say your business paid $35.00 for a lead (someone with confirmed interest in your service/product). The lead is given to a salesperson for follow-up – let’s assume the salesperson calls the lead 3 times but doesn’t reach the prospect. The salesperson doesn’t call the lead again. If there is no specific, defined lead follow-up process that dictates when leads should be followed up on, the lead cost may not be an efficient use of marketing dollars. The cycle of not following up increases the acquisition cost for the sale, as it ends before it starts.

Automation or even adding a manual process to help ensure leads are worked until they are sold could help decrease the acquisition cost of the sale. However, if other areas of the sales process are underperforming or lacking, such as sales presentations, improving the lead follow-up process may not significantly impact acquisition costs, like enhancing salespeople’s ability to share their story effectively. The entire process, every component of the sales process, must work or fit together well, like a puzzle piece, to perform at optimal efficiency and effectiveness.

 

Personalize Your Follow-Ups

I know we just mentioned automating some aspects of the lead follow-up process, but that doesn’t mean automating everything and making it a monotonous process. After you know who your lead is and what they’re interested in, personalizing the contact points afterwards helps the conversations feel more genuine and helps address each lead’s specific requests, questions, and concerns.

 

Common Lead Follow-Up Mistakes to Avoid

Being Overly Aggressive

As we mentioned at the beginning, a good follow-up leaves the customer feeling cared for and respected. Being overly aggressive and pushy has the complete opposite effect. When the customer says “no”, respect it. Don’t spam leads with messages, and don’t use aggressive language to try to sway their mind.

 

Inconsistency

Following up promptly with one lead while letting others fall between the cracks is a surefire way to lose a lot of the momentum your leads may have had and lower the customer’s experience with your business. For all you know, you’ll be putting all your effort into a lead that will fall through, while customers who were eager to do business with you will lose interest because they were ignored.

 

Failing to Focus on What Works

Not taking the time to look at your business’s data and seeing what marketing tactics and lead follow-up tactics work and what doesn’t could lead you to putting all your effort and budget into processes that will end up being a waste of your time and resources due to not being the best way to win your customers over. Take time to go through your data and see what works and what doesn’t. Investing your time there is the key to discovering your business’s perfect system that will promote the most growth.

 
 

If your small business needs help optimizing its entire sales process or just the lead follow-up component, reach out to Comprehensive Consulting Solutions for Small Businesses to learn how we can help.

 

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Mollie Watkins https://www.consultingnwa.com
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