Chris LoCurto

Finding The Life & Business You Really Want

Leadership ·

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:

  1. 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.
  2. 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?

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