How many times do you follow up on a lead?

[Harold Mansfield]

I may bid for a job, but I don't cold call..so pretty much all of my leads are inbound from various marketing efforts.

On projects (Not troubleshooting help which usually wants service immediately) once someone contacts me and we do the initial dance, either I'm sending them a proposal based on their needs, or they were window shopping and will get back to me.

If I don't hear back soon, I'll follow up with an email or phone call after a week. If I don't get a response, I don't follow up again.

Now, my friends who are or have been in sales (mortgages, phone rooms ect) are big on the follow up. And when I worked in a phone room there were all kinds of stats and tracking on closing percentages after so many follow ups and we followed up repeatedly to get a sale...which I always hated.

My line of thinking is, if someone contacts me, gets the information they asked for and doesn't contact me again, or return my call or email when I follow up...I'm done.
I feel like continuing to reach out to someone who hasn't returned my communication makes me seem that I need the sale too much and I lose leverage with pricing.

With a set priced service or product I can see where there is nothing to lose. But with a variable priced service, you can't or they will try to negotiate you down to bare bones because now you look desperate, and those projects NEVER go well. EVER!

I learned that quickly when driving a limo. The people you try to hard too get and give a deal to (because you can make it up with kick back or just need the money that day) are the ones that drink up all of your liquor and trash the car for a $5 tip. Always.

Or are you like me and assume that if they wanted to do business with me, they would respond when I reached out to check in?

Some people just don't have any common courtesy and not returning calls is how they "do business".

Am I wrong? Do you guys follow up multiple times?

[Steve B]

I'm a bad one to ask, because I used to follow up even less than you do. This year, I'm determined to follow up with at least an e-mail and then with a phone call after that. I'm trying to move my closing percentage from 40% to 55 or 60%.

With that said, I don't think I agree with you about losing all your leverage just because you follow up a couple times. I would think people understand following up is just part of the normal sales process and unrelated to being desperate.

I've often heard the advice that you follow-up until you get either a "yes" or a "no".

[billbenson]

I think it's a time thing. If you are booked, screw follow up. If you have slow time, call them back and close them or figure out why they went somewhere else. Both is valuable information.


@dan


figure out why they went somewhere else. Both is valuable information.


Dan and other copywriters here, I have a feeling that the above quoted item and many other posts I make is not proper grammar. Some posts I am aware of such as the use of there v.s. their. But not having studied grammar since high school, many times I'm really not sure what the proper grammer is.

With so many threads on proper copywriting currently going on, please correct my grammar. Some I know is incorrect such as the above example or using lower case. Some I just plain don't know.

If someone corrects my posts with the proper grammar I will thank them for educating me and I won't feel insulted!!

Thank all of you for your help.

[Steve B]

If you are booked, screw follow up.

What a missed opportunity that would be. If you are booked and further follow up would increase sales even more, then, I say, do the follow up and hire someone to handle the extra work!

[Freelancier]

For our rental home, I follow-up once about 5-7 days after initial contact. After that they either can't make up their mind or they made up their mind. If it's the former, I'll hear back, if the latter I might or might not. So that sales process seems to be right.

For my consulting firm, I don't follow up. If someone wants us and I did a good job conveying our value, then we're golden. Otherwise, we're sunk anyway. And we tend to close 80% of what we want anyway, so I think our sales process for that is ok.

So I think where I'm going with this is: what's your sales process and is it working for you? If it's not, maybe this is a candidate for tweaking... but maybe it's not the bigger problem.

[Harold Mansfield]

I'm pretty happy with my sales process and closing ratio. I feel that if the phone rings, I'm going to get them. Where I think I could improve is making the phone ring more, but that's pretty much universal.

[billbenson]

What a missed opportunity that would be. If you are booked and further follow up would increase sales even more, then, I say, do the follow up and hire someone to handle the extra work!

It's actually been a problem for me Steve. I've been so backed up at times that I either have to cherry pick who to get back to or come up with some other mechanism. My product is frequently a consultative sell. Some phone calls can take an hour and you never get the deal. Others can take 5 minutes and make $2k. You have to answer the phone to find out. I don't hang up on people although I will transfer them to the manufacturers customer service line at times. At times that hour phone call becomes a nice order and the order may not hit for 3 months.

You can get 5 calls back to back that are 10 hours of work. You can also have slow days. Its the back to back calls that create the problem.



Now that I have taken on a partner things are much better. He's an early bird and I stroll into work at 10:30 or so. He may be backed up by the time I start work, so our odd ball schedule works. I have gone from a ton of missed calls to very few missed calls or emails.

It took me so long to find a partner because I needed someone who was technically skilled and also a good sales person. He is also a friend of 20 years or more so he came pre qualified. I knew he could do the job.

[KristineS]

We usually follow up once if someone contacts us first. I've found that after we respond people will either ask more questions and we start a dialogue, or you won't hear anything more. Follow up contact beyond the first contact, if that doesn't generate a response, generally don't result in a sale.

One thing I am mulling over right now is how many times we want to contact leads in our CRM. We've got some leads that have been called several times and we've had no movement. I'm thinking if you've called someone three times or so over the course of a year and had no interest it's time to let them rest and move on.

[Steve B]

I'm glad to hear your partner is working out for you. I remember reading posts about that a while ago.

[huggytree]

i never follow up.....following up = begging for work

if they want your company they will call you and accept your bid....if they dont want you they wont....begging them and calling it a 'follow up' on the phone wont help

i tried follow ups when i started my business....mostly because i WAS hard up and ready to beg.......cant think of 1 time it ever worked....i remember how shocked the homeowners seemed to be...some were annoyed

all my jobs are referrals.....so as long as my price is in line i already have the job....my closing ratio is about 50%+ in the spring and 90%+ in the Fall...with Summer being somewhere in between.....

the time to make the sale and explain why your company is better is when you give them the bid.....all their questions should be answered

something ive found is if they are getting 3-4 bids your odds of winning if your bid #1 is 20% or less....if your bid #4 its 80%+.....as they get more bids their parameters change slightly so bid #1 isnt apples to apples to bid #4....also bid #4 is fresh in their minds.....some contractors refuse to be bid #1...they tell the customer to tell them when they have the other bids and THEN they will come over to the house with their bid....this way they are bid #3 or #4 every time..

what does a follow up call accomplish other than to make you look hard up for work?

i win more jobs when im already busy...when im slow my attitude changes and my sell ratio goes down.....

[Harold Mansfield]

The follow up isn't all bad. I have definitely closed deals on that one follow up call. Most recently after Hurricane Sandy. I'd sumitted a couple of proposals to some east coast people, and then the storm hit. A couple weeks later I followed up and closed one of them. They were actually thankful that I'd called back.

I've also been closed on a follow up. Amazon has it down to a science. Those reminder emails that they send you of things that you were shopping for are follow ups. And they work on me and it always seems like they send them when I am ready to buy. I'm pretty sure they have my pattern down...how long it takes me to buy after researching items.There is no way the timing is random. Brilliant stuff. That's good marketing if you ask me.

I think one call back is OK. Anything more than that, unless you are asked to call back, is the hard sell and closing ratios go down from there, and I just don't like doing it.

It depends on the business I guess. If I needed a plumber for a repair job and he called back days later, I may consider that begging. But if I was hiring a plumber to build a new bathroom and he came to the house to give me an estimate, I'd think a follow up call a few days later would be OK..."Just wanted to check to see of you had any other questions since we last talked"...actuallly, I do.

Probably the worse time I've ever seen was during the housing bubble, before the collapse. Mortgage companies were rediculous with the calls. 4,5, and 6 times. That is out of control.

Car dealers also give you the follow up call. Real Estate agents. Stock brokers and fund managers. There are plenty of industries where keeping in touch is how you close the deal.
I just don't think mne is one of them.

[Steve B]

It all comes down to the cost benefit ratio. If you get one or two more jobs a year and they are worth more than the cost of doing the follow-up phone call - then you're leaving money on the table if you don't do it. If you just don't like doing it and you already make enough money, then it's just a decision you get to make as a the business owner.

[Harold Mansfield]

When the heavy equiptment convention came to town when I was driving, I met a few guys that told me that they can spend months closing a deal. But the commision on just one of those huge tunnel trucks that you see, where the wheels are 3 stories high..is like $80k. And there are only so many buyers in the world.

I don't think in a business like mine, not calling someone 4 and 5 times is leaving money on the table. But I do frequently have multiple conversations with people before they put down a deposit. It just depends.

[billbenson]

i never follow up.....following up = begging for work

if they want your company they will call you and accept your bid....if they dont want you they wont....begging them and calling it a 'follow up' on the phone wont help

i tried follow ups when i started my business....mostly because i WAS hard up and ready to beg.......cant think of 1 time it ever worked....i remember how shocked the homeowners seemed to be...some were annoyed

all my jobs are referrals.....so as long as my price is in line i already have the job....my closing ratio is about 50%+ in the spring and 90%+ in the Fall...with Summer being somewhere in between.....

the time to make the sale and explain why your company is better is when you give them the bid.....all their questions should be answered

something ive found is if they are getting 3-4 bids your odds of winning if your bid #1 is 20% or less....if your bid #4 its 80%+.....as they get more bids their parameters change slightly so bid #1 isnt apples to apples to bid #4....also bid #4 is fresh in their minds.....some contractors refuse to be bid #1...they tell the customer to tell them when they have the other bids and THEN they will come over to the house with their bid....this way they are bid #3 or #4 every time..

what does a follow up call accomplish other than to make you look hard up for work?

i win more jobs when im already busy...when im slow my attitude changes and my sell ratio goes down.....

I think that is really inaccurate Huggy. For one, following up gives you information even if you don't get the business. Following up if your time could be better spent elsewhere is a different issue.

Sales has a lot to do with timing. Your followup calls may be at the right time or the wrong time. I've purchased stuff when people haven't gotten back to me. At that point price doesn't matter, the sales person got me in a 'screw it I'll just buy it from you and be done with it" mood.

To me the only issue here is 'where is my time best spent'. If you have free time which many people starting up have, follow up. If you are booked, don't! Remember we are talking about a 1 min phone call if they don't want to deal with you or possibly a long call if they do want to deal with you.

[huggytree]

. But if I was hiring a plumber to build a new bathroom and he came to the house to give me an estimate, I'd think a follow up call a few days later would be OK..."Just wanted to check to see of you had any other questions since we last talked"...actuallly, I do.


.


if you had a question as a customer WHY wouldnt you call ME? why would I have to call you? thats what i dont get....how does bugging the customer and asking 'do you have any questions' do anything for you?

if you give the customer everything he needs up front there arent any questions.....my bids are very detailed....

[huggytree]

I think that is really inaccurate Huggy. For one, following up gives you information even if you don't get the business. Following up if your time could be better spent elsewhere is a different issue.

Sales has a lot to do with timing. Your followup calls may be at the right time or the wrong time. I've purchased stuff when people haven't gotten back to me. At that point price doesn't matter, the sales person got me in a 'screw it I'll just buy it from you and be done with it" mood.

To me the only issue here is 'where is my time best spent'. If you have free time which many people starting up have, follow up. If you are booked, don't! Remember we are talking about a 1 min phone call if they don't want to deal with you or possibly a long call if they do want to deal with you.

the only info it ever gave me is that people rarely have questions, they rarely give details about whats going on, they want to be private and not discuss their decision making with me and 33% of the time they seem annoyed.......give them all the info they need from day 1 and let them make the decision they need to make.....if you properly screened them before you bothered giving them the bid your odds should be good.......i can typically tell if i got the job or not from day 1....before i leave the house if i kept score id be 95%+ accurate if i will be getting the job signed or not...calling them 1x,2x or 3x more just to say 'hi' wont change anything......but it will make me desperate looking

dont chase work....let work come to you......dont beg, be in demand

i do agree that not every business is the same and some may need multiple phone calls to get the job done....some decisions may take 6 months to a year from the original estimate and you may need to keep the customer thinking about YOU........for my business if they arent ready to make the decision within 1-2 weeks the odds of winning the job are almost 0

[Harold Mansfield]

if you had a question as a customer WHY wouldnt you call ME? why would I have to call you? thats what i dont get....how does bugging the customer and asking 'do you have any questions' do anything for you?

if you give the customer everything he needs up front there aren't any questions.....my bids are very detailed....

It's pretty simple. You aren't the only one that I called and someone else has my ear because they followed up at the right time. Sometimes it's all timing. I don't get every job on price and ability alone. Personal interaction has a LOT to do with it. Customer service. I deal with Small Businesses. They like interaction. Most aren't going to hire someone that they don't feel a rapport with. Not saying we need to be BFFs, but cold and "all business" will not land me many jobs.

If I know they have other bids and it gets down to me and someone else...I'll beat that someone else on personality 9 times out of 10. And people tell me why..because other web designers talk down to them, and don't stop to see if they understand or take the time to explain. When I'm up against someone like that, it's easy money.

Some people won't call with questions if they don't feel that you are receptive to taking the time. If they are on the fence, they are going to base their decision on what you've given them and possibly your website and reviews. Sometimes that "check in" call is enough to put them in your corner. If the other guy does it, he's got your money.

Agencies on the other hand, aren't as personal. They just want you to complete the tasks.

Dealing with people and dealing with the department of some company are completely different sells. Sometimes you go the extra mile with people. But I still say one call back is enough in my industry, unless you are making the sale and more attention is needed.

[billbenson]

Huggy, Harold is completely correct in his post. You are assuming that every quote is a one call close or one call lost business. Getting an order is a process. The first step in that process can be simply getting an apointment, makeing a quote, closing an order or anything in between. And it varies from business to business and situation to situation. If you didn't get the order, you either didn't do a good sales job or it was business you didn't want. If you think following up on a quote is begging for work pull your head out of your butt. Following up on quotes is what good sales people do!!! Beyond that customers appreciate it.

[vangogh]

Harold I follow up pretty much the same way you do. It depends on the lead and how the first conversation went and also what the project is. I'd probably follow up an extra time or two for a big project. I might not follow up at all for a very small one. In initial conversations I usually tried to end things with one or the other of us supposed to do something to get in touch with the other. Maybe it's me putting an estimate together or it's the lead providing me with some additional information so I can prepare an estimate. I might prepare a few questions I need to ask to proceed. That gives an opening to have some kind of contact and keep the conversation going.

At the same time I'm also trying to get a feel for the person and decide if I think pursuing the project is going to be worth my time. I'm sure you've had a lot of people waste your time. I try to find out as quick as possible if a lead is wasting my time and if I think they are it's unlikely I'll ever contact them for anything.

[Steve B]

Well - you can either believe Huggytree or the thousands of books written about sales over the last several decades. Perhaps HT is correct and all the other sales experts just have it wrong :)

I've followed up on my leads for periods of time and I've not done so (most) of the time. I hate doing it because I hate to hear when they decided to go with a competitor. It hurts my feelings - it's like getting rejected when asking for a date. But, I'm often surprised by the people that tell me they appreciate the follow-up phone call and that they DID have another question the've been meaning to ask me. In my business, one more sale per year is easily worth the time spent making 100 follow-up phone calls (assuming my time is worth $100 per hour). And, I definitely learn things from some of the people that don't end up buying from me.

If you're making so much money that you can walk away from even just a few more sales per year, that's a great position to be in. But, most people either need or want to maximize their earnings. Making the most of every lead is a great way to do that. You certainly aren't going to make FEWER sales by following up on each lead.

Harold - I don't think anyone has suggested calling people 4 or 5 times. One follow-up either by e-mail or phone seems very reasonable in every type of sale I can think of.

[huggytree]

i take the hands off approach to all my customers......i wouldnt have a problem with a follow up e-mail though....they look at it when THEY are ready....many of my customers are small business guys like me...they dont want to be bothered on the phone......

[Freelancier]

As I wrote earlier: there's no one right answer, except for "whatever works best for your sales process to help you close the amount of work you want to have."

Each business is going to be different, there's no "right" and there's no "wrong", because your actual results are going to tell you what's working and what isn't. If you're not landing enough work, doing a follow-up call with prospects is one technique to maybe close some work that might have gotten away otherwise. If you're landing too much work, then being picky (and raising your rates) is likely the best option for maximizing your revenue within your current business structure. It's when you want to increase your revenue or change your business structure that you'll want to visit this topic and figure out the answer that's going to work best for your business.

I have a software product company with a product that sells for about $900. Some prospects will call and ask for a demo and I'll tell them where they can go on the web site to get a self-driven demo. I used to give real demos and walk people through it, but it wasn't helping close deals, so I decided that I would not waste that demo time as part of the sales process (especially since it always came down to one crazy weird feature that no one had that they really wanted to ask about, but they wanted to waste my time getting to that question). If the product cost $3000, I might consider more hand-holding, but I'm finding that at the lower price-point, there's less reason to do that. All part of adjusting my sales process to the intended market.

[billbenson]

One of the problems in this discussion is people are lumping sales into one big category. There is cold calling, products that require follow up, spam emails, etc. All are sales. All are different and take different approaches and personalities. And there are tons of subcategories of each.

I've talked to people who said they would never go into sales becaues you need to lie to people. Yes there are deceptive or minulaptive tactics in some sales but outright lying is rarely productive except in scams.

I've probably been to well over 100 sales classes over the years. While I have learned something from every one, they are so broadly represented that they are useless. The best class I had was traveling with my boss who I consider the best salesman I ever knew for the type of product we had at the time. He'd be useless for selling the products I sell now.

No blanket statement is going to apply.

You will here people state that you need to be outgooing for a sales job. That's one of the biggest falsehoods in sales. One of the first things they will teach you in sales is "what are you looking for" or similar. You want them telling you what they want. You don't want you shoving something down their throat that they don't want.

I could go on and on, but I'll leave this post at that.

[Freelancier]

One of the first things they will teach you in sales is "what are you looking for" or similar. You want them telling you what they want. You don't want you shoving something down their throat that they don't want.

One of the first salespeople I got to know personally during my career was always way over her sales goal. She told me that she absolutely hated "selling", but that she loved going into customers and asking "how can I help you?" She said being helpful worked for her as a sales technique and I find that to be true for what I do as well. Much easier to offer help than to sell.

[Harold Mansfield]

As much as I like to say I hate sales, I've done a version of it my entire life.

As a Waiter, upselling products at a table was standard SOP.
As a bartender I not only upsold product, but in Vegas, gaming.
As a bar manager I sold the venue for private functions, to potential employees, and kept rapor with existing customers so that they would keep coming back so that I could contineu to sell them things.
As limo driver on the Las Vegas strip I was selling myself, my car and the city's entertainment options.
I've worked in a time share phone room, which was a combination closing inbound calls as well as upselling owners and re-tours.
And now I sell my services and myself as a service provider.

They are all different kinds of sales, but they are sales. In each, customer service skills, and personality are the whole ball game.

They say as a consumer driven economy, everything we do is sales and marketing.

[billbenson]

@ Harold, one you mentioned as a server or bartender is up selling. Customer walks in and order's fish You say we just got in some fresh X fish, its really good. Assuming that is the truth and you aren't just onloading old fish on a customer, you are doing both of you a service. The customer is free to look at the price difference and decide. He will also remember you and probably give you a bigger tip if it's good. I would.

I also downsell at times. Customer wants something that has features he doesn't need, I may suggest a different product. Say a customer came to you and was willing to pay for a $5k word press site but in their case a three page site builder site would be fine. Assuming you had enough money to keep bread on the table what would you do?

[Harold Mansfield]

Say a customer came to you and was willing to pay for a $5k word press site but in their case a three page site builder site would be fine. Assuming you had enough money to keep bread on the table what would you do?

I try to tailor my marketing to people who want WordPress websites, not just general website services...so I don't get many people calling that aren't looking for WordPress service specifically.

However, it's not the best solution for every possible thing and I have no problem telling people that. The last thing I want to do is make a promise and take money for something that I know can't be built the way they are envisioning it on this platform.

Sometimes it's people that think WordPress is the answer to do something really complex, cheaper than having to have something custom built.
And sometimes people have no idea what they want, they just heard WordPress is what they needed.

I advise people on what they need. Every site or situation isn't the same and there's a solution for every situation. Just because I don't build them a WordPress site, doesn't mean that I can't provide other services or work with other platforms.

However, I never recommend site builders to anyone unless their budget is just ridiculously unrealistic. Sometimes the experience of a site builder allows people to gain some perspective.

[billbenson]

It was really a leading question Harold as I knew what your answer would be.

However, site builders probably do have a place. Say a 20 y/o church member who has directions and itinerary's for a church teen event but needs no marketing. It would work and give the kid some experience. But that certainly isn't a business site.

[vangogh]

but in their case a three page site builder site would be fine

Even with your church example I don't think it's ever fine. In that case I send the person to WordPress.com or Tumblr or something like that. The site builder will probably end up charging more over the course of the year than a designer would have to build a custom site.

To answer your initial question though about the customer willing to pay $5k and not needing anything close, I think the example is a little far fetched. Rarely if ever do people approach me willing to pay more than what they really want me to do. However people do approach me thinking they need more than they really do and when it happens I point them to a more appropriate solution.

Realistically though, any business should expect to invest more than $5k into their site over the life of their site. Websites aren't things that are done once. They're done and then worked on and improved over time.