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The Sales Clinic: Three Fatal Follow-up Mistakes
July 22, 2008
Is your team's follow-up call strategy costing you valuable business?
By Andy Preston
Depending on the quality of your team's follow-up calls, the opportunity for your company to secure new business—and retain existing clients—can be won or lost. That puts a lot of pressure on your reps, doesn't it? Especially when the majority of follow-up calls made are of fairly poor quality (and some are truly awful).
Here are a few habitual mistakes that you'll want to nip in the bud if your team is to successfully gain more business from their follow-up calls.
Mistake No. 1: Being Desperate and Lying
Now I know we're in sales (or have to do sales as part of our role) and sometimes we may have to "bend the truth" a little on occasion, but I doubt that outright lying helps our cause as professionals trying to build profitable business relationships.
An example of a call I heard made earlier this month went like this: "Hello Mr X. We spoke three months ago and you asked me to call back today to make an appointment with you…" While this would normally be an acceptable introduction, such a greeting breeds trouble in this case—not only because the potential client never said anything of the sort, but also because the salesperson had never even spoken to the client before.
What could such a scenario do to your company's credibility in the eyes of the potential client? And if the salesperson is speaking to a decision maker with any level of authority, they may be challenged on it quite strongly with something like "No, we did not," or "I don't remember that," leading to either an argument or a rapid climb-down—and probably the end of the call.
Mistake No. 2: Talking About Literature (or E-mails)
Be forewarned. Many of you are going to cringe when you read this one. A lot of sales reps and managers are probably guilty of doing this, and this may be a painful realization…
The biggest mistake I see most salespeople make when they follow up on literature or an e-mail is when they say something like: "Hi. It's Fred from XYZ company. We recently sent you some literature. I'm just calling up to make sure you received it."
No, no, no, no and NO! This is truly awful, yet in how many of the phone calls you receive do you hear sales reps say something like that? Nearly all of them.
Let's think about this for a minute. What are the two most likely responses from a prospect that has little to no rapport with your company? Either "No I didn't, would you please go through the same rigmarole again, just for my amusement," or "Yes I did, and I've got all the information I need right now."
Where can the call progress from these responses? Even if you've sent literature and have been lucky enough to get the decision maker to take the call, you run the risk of the call being very short, with another call-back scheduled for a later point in time. No forward movement can be made with the prospect. The funnel is halted.
Mistake No. 3: Having Endless Call-Backs
Most follow-up calls start something like this: "Hello Mr X, we spoke about three months ago about you xyx and I was just calling to see how things are going for you at the moment…"
Awful! Is it any wonder that the response decision makers give to that sort of opening is something like, "Things are fine. What do you want?" Suddenly, your reps are under even more pressure to perform. It's pretty hard to rescue the call from here, unless you just happen to get lucky (which may happen on occasion).
Far too many salespeople make this mistake and end their previous call without a defined outcome. This has a 100% negative impact on the potential success of their next call. If reps have nothing to build on from the first call, chances are the prospect won't either. Always make sure your reps collect enough information to bring up relative issues a client was having at a certain point in time. This way when a follow-up call is made, dialogue is opened for further assessment and lead development.
Learn from Your Mistakes
So, if your reps are about to perform their routine follow-ups, or reaching out to prospects they've spoken to in the past, make sure they don't make any of the mistakes shown above. They'll have far greater successes with their calls.
S&MM columnist Andy Preston is a leading authority on sales and sales management. He is the founder of the highly acclaimed Sales Training and Coaching Company Outstanding Results, providing help, guidance and support to in-house sales teams of both large and small organisations throughout the UK and Europe. You can see and hear more about Andy at www.andy-preston.com and his sales training company at www.outstanding-results.co.uk.
Sales & Marketing Management Magazine
This article is brought to you by Sales & Marketing Management, the leading authority for executives in the sales and marketing field.
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