Habit 50: Follow-Up!

April 27, 2018 Selling Comments Off on Habit 50: Follow-Up!

By Bill Phillips, Strategen, Inc.

To continue with the “Account Development Habits”, let’s look at Habit 50: Follow-up cold calls with a phone call, every other day, to secure appointments.

Last month’s newsletters talked about the importance of making cold calls. This month, let’s discuss following-up. We firmly believe that “Follow-Up” is the most important function in sales and in management for that matter. You can do all the planning, all the organizing, and all of the executing you want, but without follow-up, you’re dead.

You can do all the research and the list development, and the cold calls but without follow-up, you’re dead.

Very early on in my partner Lou’s career, his first boss taught him, follow-up was crucial to his success. He was a very organized person and had a very organized, manual, follow-up system (the system was manual because this occurred in the late 60’s and personal computers were not born yet). He made it clear that Lou had two choices; one, he could use the system and be successful or two, he could go home and not have a job. He chose the former and learned well and has been a disciple of “Follow-Up” ever since.

Applying his philosophy to cold call/new customer development, we think it’s imperative that cold calls be followed up with a phone call every other day to get an appointment. This frequency is argued by many people, but as a rule of thumb, we think it holds true. There is no argument that cold calls must be followed up with a phone call. The frequency must be regular in order to be effective. Waiting more than three days, in my opinion, is a waste. The follow up call is based in the hope that the person that was cold called at least looked at the material that was left for their review. It is also based on the hope that the person has some recollection of those materials. The longer you wait, the less likely the person is to recall the materials, so call soon and often.

Habit 50: Follow-up cold calls with a phone call, every other day, to secure appointment.

“A Habit” is not work, but just a thing that is done every day and following-up cold calls with a phone call, every other day, to secure appointment is critical to your success in sales and can easily become a Habit.

TIME MANAGEMENT. For Top Performers every task is planned and focused on the goals that earn the results. Top Performers plan and then engage. They act on their plans, they work hard and they get results.

Coaching these skills is a critical part of what we do. We are here to help you develop and implement your Strategic Plan and coach and develop the skills to implement the plan successfully.