Why do you want to follow-up with customers?

During your day-to-day activities you make commitments and promises to customers and prospects about sending information, preparing proposals, arranging the next meeting and next steps in the sales cycle. How do you manage these details and the information is what will set you apart from average performers. If you say to a customer that you will send them some follow-up information tomorrow, you send it to them tomorrow. Not the next day or sometime later. If there is a problem fulfilling this commitment, call your customer and let them know there is a problem and reset their expectation. By doing this you keep your commitment and your customer knows you mean what you say. This is an important part of building trust with your customers and prospects.

As part of the follow-up, make sure you set a time by which you will complete a task. If you say you will send information and there is no assigned time to it; that means you can send it tomorrow or next month, or next year and you will have honoured your commitment. It also means that you don’t want to make any commitment to your actions, to moving your sales cycle along or to the building of trust with your clients.

How do you manage your commitments?

When you make your promises to a customer how are you remembering what you need to do. Where are you writing down what you need to do? Are you using technology? How you manage this information reflects on your ability to manage your client. If they have to call you and follow-up to get the promised information, then they are not going to believe you the next time you make another commitment.

The process of managing your information comes down to how well you are organized. If you have pieces of paper all over your desk and in your briefcase, and you have no day-timer or notebook that you use to track details and you don’t take advantage of technology; then you are at the mercy of your ability to remember everything you say each day. We all know those individuals who are a dollar short and a day late. You don’t want to be that person. At the end of each day, you want to make sure that you have written down all the details of your day and what commitments you have made to customers and prospects. Then you can manage your time for the next day and the rest of your week, according to the information you need.

Make sure you take advantage of resources you have in your company. You can’t be all things to all people, so use technical resources, financial resources and any other advisors you may have. It then is your job to manage these resources and make sure they deliver what you have committed to. The biggest mistake you can make is to blame these resources for not doing your job!

Knowing your sales cycle

Knowing your sales cycle and the main steps in the cycle is going to help you in this process. As clients are asking for information know why this information will get you closer to closing the business. Why does a client or prospect want this specific information? Do they have an issue related to your product or service? Are they really interested in buying from you? Too many sales reps get caught in supplying information to clients who are doing research and have a rep that is only too happy to provide information with no questions asked. Make sure you are asking questions about the information the client is looking for. How is this important to you? What will this do for your business? This is as important to you as managing your commitments. I have seen far too many reps get stalled at this stage of their sale and they become a resource for information for a prospect, or client, who has no intention of buying anything.

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