Old ways are sometimes the best….

The Old ways are sometimes the best. But not always!

Let’s face it the days of “hard-sell” are long gone. (Good riddance.)  But the age old challenge remains. What’s the best way to keep in touch with prospects without alienating them completely?

Creating a Sales Opportunity pipeline

For more than 80% of sales, it takes more than 6 follow ups with a prospect before on boarding a new client. 48% of people involved in sales give up after their first follow up. Setting out your client acquisition process to involve more than 6 follow ups will instantly win you more business.

It’s that simple.

It’s why savvy marketers and small and medium business alike are rediscovering offline marketing (networking, direct mail, telephone relationship marketing) in their droves because they want to cut through the noise and stand out in the crowd.

Does telemarketing still work?  You bet it does.

According to a recent CIM survey, 47% of marketers reported that b2b telemarketing is the single most effective form of lead generation for small and medium businesses.  The reason? Human to Human (H2H) interaction means that you get instant feedback.

The reason? Human to Human (H2H) interaction means that you get instant feedback from the prospect. This sets telephone marketing apart from other forms of communications because it’s a two-way interaction in the “here and now”. In fact, you might be pleasantly surprised just how many people actually prefer to receive a follow-up phone rather than email or a DM.

And, if like us, you’ve been around for a while operating in professional services market (like most of our clients) you instinctively know it pays dividends to “play the long game” and nurture relationships by picking up the telephone every once in a while.  But sometimes we don’t. Why? Because following up properly takes time and effort. And these “things” have an annoying habit of getting in the way – things like doing the day job!

But we don’t do it consistently. Why?

Because following up properly takes time and effort. “Things” have an annoying habit of getting in the way – things like doing our day job!

Here are a few reasons why we don’t follow up on a consistent basis (you might recognise a few).

• We forget
• We focus on hot leads
• Unconverted leads fall through the cracks
• We think people will call us back
• We don’t want to appear pushy
• We don’t realise the impact lack of follow has on our business

If you’re nodding your head whilst reading this you’ve been around in business long enough to know that we’ve all been guilty of doing one of more of these things (or not!) at some point.

But does this mean we have to continue to let this happen; or to inadvertently slide back into bad habits?  Well, It’s up to you.

But it’s worth keeping in mind that follow up failure can be expensive.

Interesting statistics:

• 67% of buyer that say “no” today will be ready to buy in the next year -Gartner research
• 80% of leads you consider to be “dead” will buy in 2 years.

Isn’t it about time to stop letting your prospects and customers slip through your fingers?!

So before you type that email to follow up on a meeting, why not consider picking up the telephone instead?

Good calling!