The business is riding high after your recent product update, your marketing strategy has been up to the mark. You have been making daily visits to your clients, making calls to prospects, attending various tradeshows and networking events.

Somehow, the flow of revenue is not satisfactory and you know there is something missing from the whole equation.

What is it?

The answer to the most pressing question that every startup business owner has on their mind is “timely follow-up”. Let’s look at this statistic from Dartnell Corp.

80 percent of sales are made after that fifth sales call — Marketing Wizdom

If your sales teams are complaining about hearing “No” from the prospects too often, you must make them aware of the fact that 60% of the prospects say “Yes” after the fourth call.

Components of prospect classification

Here we are defining four components that must be kept in mind while developing prospect classification protocols:

1. Type of Product/Service

Have you created a solution that fulfills an already existing need?

Are you selling a solution that is new to the market and is the answer to a persistent problem?

2. Origination Source of Prospects

Where do your prospects generally come from?

Do you generate your leads from inbound or outbound efforts?

Why the question?

Inbound leads need quicker response than offline leads. But, it’s never that simple.

Sometimes, some of your offline sources need faster responses. It all depends on the situation and your sales goals.

3. Company Quality

Respond on the basis of quantity but keep a certain amount of quality in mind too

When you are creating a conversation with your prospects, never rank the contact, instead, rank the company!

It may be the person who

downloaded a white paper or checklist from your website

gave you a visiting card at a meetup

reached out to you on your direct number

4. The Buyer’s Journey

Consider the buyers’ journey!

Reaching out within the first five or ten minutes of a download may be a great idea but it may push them away if you make a call so soon!

Consider:

the buyer persona

the type of content they downloaded

various other actions they took on your website

Rank the prospects in this way and make you call starting at the bottom, as the lower the rank the closer they are to making a decision, and an informational call will push them towards making the purchase.

How can you effectively follow-up with your prospects

Carrying all the information forward, let us help you out with the tips for following up with prospects after a networking event.

1. Timing the Follow-up

It is necessary for you to remind the existence of your solution to the prospect!

As discussed earlier in this article, even with a contact management system in place, sales teams give up on prospects either too easily or make it tough for the prospect to do business with you.

Tracking the prospects behavior and their interaction with your resource materials helps you time your follow-ups in a manner that do not feel too pushy!

However, we would recommend to not wait for more than one day to follow-up with the prospect!

2. Frequency of Following Up

A minimum of 6 outreach attempts is must for convincing the prospect to make the purchase with you.

Timely and persistence response helps you in breaking the ice with your prospect, even after a detailed discussion in a networking event.

Simply put, you are not the only salesperson that is headhunting prospects in these events.

And after listening to so many pitches, it is tough for the prospect to recall the who’s who from the event.

Integrate your email and voicemails while communicating with your prospects. These two tools are the best ways to let the customer in on the various other features that your company has to offer.

3. The Importance of Nurturing

This may not feel like a part of the follow-up protocol, but having a plan of action for all the cold leads helps! You might not have a feature that the prospect was really looking forward to! Or the prospect’s budget didn’t allow them to invest in your offering! However, having them in loop about the developments you are doing and the special prices you are launching helps in nurturing them for a future rendezvous!

4. Following up After Every Networking Event

The most important part of your prospecting cycle. In the data shown at the start of the article, we mentioned how quickly or easily sales reps give the pursuit! This must not be the case once you have made enough connections in a networking event.

Feeding the CRM with the appointment details helps in creating meeting inside your calendar so that you get timely notification of follow-ups.

With the help of a CRM, you can automate the process of sending out the introductory or welcome email, as soon as the relative input is made.

No need to carry your pen and notepad, you can make critical notes in your CRM itself, it will get auto attached with the contact you created. This comes in handy especially when you are preparing yourself for a one-to-one meeting.

Imagine how impressed the prospect will be when he hears one of the major points that he discussed with you while talking to you at the networking event, about the problems he is facing!

These networking events are done in a rush, you click with some, you miss some! We would advise that you get acquainted with as many people as possible, for collecting their business cards at least.

Using their contact details, email them within 24 hours after the event, You never know you can build a connection post-event; leading to a referral!

5. Maximize the Human Connection

Yes, you read that correct! It is part of the daily human psyche that requires human interaction and sales is no different. Convincing someone to spend their money, without a humane interaction may push them away from your product or service.

As a sales rep, show them your interactive and human side everytime you are following up with them. We are not asking you to avoid “being professional”, we are just asking you to personalize your approach for the variety of prospects. It eases the conversion process and enhances your deal closures.

To conclude. . .

Information, the right kind of that, allows you to discover the connection you need to propel your sales funnel by feeding prospects at a regular interval. Having a sales intelligence software on your side allows you to be one step ahead of the competition.

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A sales CRM software such as Salesmate allows its users more than data accessibility on multiple devices! Salesmate CRM lets you automate you most arduous sales tasks so that your sales reps can focus on the process that matter the most for your business; bringing in convertible prospects!

Make and receive your sales calls, leave voicemails, welcome the support callers with informative voice messages, all with Salesmate CRM! Automate your sales process with Salesmate CRM and make sure that you never miss one single follow-up task.

Delegate prospects amongst the reps, create reminders, automate emails and send out text message greetings to prospects on a special occasions. Salesmate CRM is the software that brings you one step closer to your sales target and helps in creating lasting relationship.