I truly believe it doesn’t matter if you have the best product in the world. Until you sell it, you don’t have a business. There is nothing more important for your company than sales, so ensuring your team has every tool available is an absolute must.
Begin by:
- Setting Team Goals for your sales force. Your team needs to operate as a group, striving for the same goal instead of individuals working by themselves.
- Ensuring they are actually following a sales process, like I wrote about in Four Must-Take Steps to a Sale! If not, they are most likely jumping the gun. If they are pushing, people will feel it and find the first opportunity to walk. If they actually get the sale, then I can almost guarantee the customer will have Buyer’s Remorse.
Out of the four steps, the one salespeople miss all of the time is follow-up. Many think, If I call them, they’ll get mad and I’ll lose the sale. They’re wrong. Trust me on this one. If they lose the sale because of a call, they didn’t have it in the first place. In fact, studies show most sales happen from follow-up anyway.
Marketing blogger Kelly Marsh recently cited a study from McGraw-Hill showing the statistics of sales from follow-up. It said:
- 48% of salespeople never follow-up with a prospect.
- 25% of salespeople make a second contact and stop.
- 12% of salespeople only make three contacts and stop.
- 10% of salespeople make more than three contacts.
When follow-up occurs:
- 2% 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 on the fifth to 12th contact.
If the majority of your team falls in the majority—no follow-up—you need to make some serious adjustments in the way they sell. You’re only getting about 2% of your potential sales. Basically, only the top 10% of salespeople are going the extra mile to close the deal. It sure makes sense why they are the sales leaders.
I know, you are very busy like me. Therefore, you pass up purchases all of the time. You simply don’t have time. I can’t tell you how many concerts that I really wanted to attend were missed because I completely forgot to buy the tickets. If someone called me about purchasing them, it would have been a different story.
Starting today, get your team on a process of following up. Make them understand that we live in a busy world. If they have correctly completed the sales process to this point, the prospect is almost expecting follow-up. Don’t let them get call reluctance and let the sale pass by!
Questions: Do you already do this? If so, how has it worked for you?
Related articles
- Setting Team Goals (ChrisLoCurto.com)
- Four Must Take Steps To A Sale! (ChrisLoCurto.com)
- Buyer’s Remorse (ChrisLoCurto.com)