To be effective in sales, follow-up is necessary because 80% of sales are made after salespeople follow-up at least five times. People are busy, timing isn’t always right, and sometimes people just don’t make purchases the very moment they realize they’re eventually going to make the purchase anyway.
An important reality for salespeople to grasp is that people buy when THEY’RE ready to buy, not when a salesperson is ready to sell. What this means is a salesperson needs to be remembered by prospects when they’re ready to buy, and that seems to make follow-up essential.
Best practices during the course of follow-up
As stated, salespeople need to be remembered by potential buyers when they’re ready to buy. While follow-up can be performed with different strategies, there are better ways to go about it than others.
For example, salespeople who think and act with their prospect’s best interests in mind often make more sales because of it. During interactions, prospects can usually tell early on if a salesperson truly cares about them or if their primary focus is to make a sale to help themselves. Salespeople who truly care about whether their products or services will help prospective buyers are usually more like-able, and since consumers are less likely to buy from salespeople they don’t like, being like-able makes a huge difference.
With that in mind, another important reality for salespeople to grasp is that people need new information to change their response from “no” to “yes”. Therefore, at opportune moments throughout the course of follow-up, salespeople need to introduce new information to help prospective buyers see how they will benefit from buying what the salesperson is selling. Sometimes prospects just don’t see the value enough until the right cord is struck. However, when the value becomes clear, that is when people usually decide to make a purchase.
With a goal of helping more people, here are some best practices for companies and salespeople to incorporate during follow-up:
- Companies should send relevant, valuable information to every prospect regularly, relentlessly and frequently (without being annoying).
- Companies should communicate with prospects efficiently in ways other than the normal, time-consuming, one-on-one methods.
- Companies should log all communication between their company and prospects in an organized fashion.
- Salespeople should be armed with an arsenal of specific information they can present to prospects upon request.
- The progress of each lead through a sales pipeline should be tracked so companies always know where every prospect stands.
By following these practices, companies and salespeople give themselves a better chance to effectively execute follow-up and make more sales.
Improve follow-up with video marketing and new information
When follow-up includes a combined approach with the following elements, it has proven to produce great results:
- Education. To change a “no” to a “yes”, communication during follow-up must inform prospects of new, valuable information. Salespeople who show up with no value tend to wear out their welcome fast. However, salespeople who give prospects information they need tend to earn trust. Also, new information can add value without being profound. By being friendly, respectful, understanding, listening well, charming without being obnoxious, appropriately entertaining, knowledgeable about what works well in a prospect’s industry, giving genuine complements, and conducting themselves without “commission breath“, salespeople can add value to their prospects.
- Repetition. Sometimes people need to hear the same thing repeatedly before they fully understand the benefits of buying a particular product or service. Therefore, without being annoying, salespeople should act with patience and repeat important details at the right moments.
- Variety. Throughout follow-up, salespeople benefit greatly from using a variety of tactics that include direct mail, phone, email, voice, videos, and face-to-face visits that aren’t always focused primarily on making a sale. Often, different prospects respond favorably to different tactics. In today’s world, more innovative options like webinars, videos, and video marketing products have proven to deliver great results.
With regards to video marketing and providing new information, well made videos in state-of-the-art products like video brochures, video mailers, video gift boxes, video sample boxes, point of purchase displays (POP displays), and just about anything in which a video screen can be installed can greatly increase the effectiveness of follow-up.
People love videos. They also appreciate learning new information that can help improve their lives. When salespeople provide value and execute follow-up with patience, sales are more likely to result.
Also, without a doubt, video marketing products make companies and their salespeople interesting, like-able, and more memorable.
To learn more about follow-up or any of the video marketing products we offer, contact us today.
Having owned an advertising magazine in Utah, I’ve worked in marketing for over twenty years.
I started writing for MediaFast in 2014. The first time I held one of their video brochures, I thought something like, “Wow! This blows away our magazine and any other print advertising I’ve ever seen. This is like a TV commercial, and I’m holding it in my hands. Amazing!”
Since then, video brochures, video mailers and video boxes have become leaders in marketing performance. It’s a privilege to write about them. I also love MediaFast—with its top-notch product quality, industry leading customer service, and all of the wonderful people I get to work with.
