Follow up!

You spend your hard earned money advertising and marketing to get a prospect to contact you. You succeed; they make contact – well done! You provide them with a quote or further information and then just leave them alone. Why? For some reason they haven’t purchased from you yet. You must follow up to establish where they are in the buying cycle.

Yet there’s reluctance from so many business owners to follow up, why?

Oh I’ve heard all sorts or reasons;

  • “We don’t want to appear pushy”
  • “We’re just too busy to chase people”
  • “We don’t want to Hassall them”
  • “We’re not like double glazing sales people you know”
  • “They’ll call us when they’re ready”

Not following up could be one of the biggest mistakes you’re making. You could be leaving as much as 98% of your potential cash on the table for your competitors to come and snatch from under your nose. That’s right, you read that correctly, you could be loosing as much as 98% of your potential business through failing to follow up with prospects – read on.

If you’re guilty of not following up, here are some statistics I picked up which should scare the pants off you.

  • 49% of businesses never follow up with a prospect (ok, so if you are guilty at least you’re not alone if that’s any consolation)
  • 25% of businesses only make a second contact and then stop

It’s a staggering discovery, but so few businesses make more than two contacts. They’re losing a small fortune – are you? Here’ why follow ups are so important, because…

  • 2% of sales are made on the first contact
  • 3% of sales are made on the second contact
  • 5% of sales are made on the third contact
  • 10% of sales are made on the fourth contact
  • 80% of sales are made between the fifth to twelfth contact -FACT

Is that a wake up call for you? If you’re like almost half of all businesses and make no more than one follow-up to your prospects… you’re leaving a massive 98% of your potential income on the table.

In the real world and not just based on these scary statistics of course there are legitimate reason why people choose not to buy from you, but isn’t it better that you know why they don’t buy? That way you can fine tune your offering in future? If you don’t ask, you’ll never know.

One of the most effective methods of keeping in contact with your prospects after they’ve contacted you is through the use of “autoresponders”. For those of you feeling like any repeat contact is too much like “high pressure selling” for your liking -this is heaven sent!

What is an autoresponder?

An autoresponder is probably one of the most important on-line marketing tools you can have. It provides an opt-in email list for you to feed good, valuable information to your prospects. Free information – no charge! Don’t be tempted to offer a conditional give a way such as a discount voucher… only redeemable when they purchase one of your products. FREE, means no charge.

This fully automated solution will help you achieve multiple contacts required to achieve an initial sale and future sales. Remember, 80% of sales are made after five contacts!

Do autoresponders really work? Well you’re probably reading this as a result of subscribing to my Aweber email list! Need I say more!

There are numerous good autoresponders to choose from and I urge you to explore and implement this option. I have more information available on the topic if you want it, in the meantime take a look at www.awebber.com

All the best,

Steve Clarke