Sales Follow-Up Steps and 8 Techniques to Improve It

Have you been constantly frustrated and discouraged by low conversion rates in your sales job?

Then we have good news for you!

Today, we will discuss some simple yet effective strategies which you will be able to apply to make amendments to your sales conversion ratios through proper sales follow up.

It doesn't matter whether you have been there in the industry for a very long time or are just a new recruit; making amendments to your sales ability is fundamentally essential to your success.

‍

What is Sales Follow-up?

After an original exchange through cold calling or any other sales pitch, sales follow-up involves you contacting possible customers or leads and talking to them again.

It means getting in touch with people interested in your product or service.

The goal is to interact with them, address their concerns, and convert them into paying clients after your initial cold email or individual encounter.

It is essential for building relationships, reiterating value propositions, and completing deals.

On average, you can only close around two percent of deals at the first point of contact.

That indicates that if you don't follow up, even with a simple follow-up email, you may lose as much as 98% of your prospective sales.

It is wise to understand the benefits of following up so you don't lose out on the cutthroat competition that characterizes today's business world.

Nothing comes on a silver platter. Let's chase it!

‍

How to Do a Follow-Up in Sales

In order to succeed in the follow-up of sales, art is needed more than science.

You become better at doing something time and again. There is nothing that can be substituted for forming reliable follow-up practices.

What's better for follow-up: email or phone? That depends on the objectives. For instance, Are you optimizing for fast response time or good results regardless of duration? A phone call is the most effective medium if you want a speedy answer (because a problem is time-sensitive).

Coming off as bothersome, however, is much easier, and therefore, the chances of turning a "maybe" into a "no" are considerably more significant.

If you call a prospect ten times in two days, even if they are interested, they will most probably turn you down.

They'll tell to themselves, "Geez, working with this person is too painful. I'll pass."

As for magnifying your chances of high success rates, email is the most effective means of follow-up. But it may take years to send them a monthly email.

Of course, the best follow-up email is the first one. It will generate the most significant number of responses—up to 40% more than the initial contact email.

The second email gives positive feedback.

It's worth the effort, without a doubt.

Otherwise, there is a simple golden rule that remains effective at all times, barring some hit-and-miss - sending a follow-up all too early will look aggressive and invasive.

Give your prospects around two to three days to think about saying no to your offer and answer accordingly.

How Often Should You Follow Up?

Depending on the situation and the unique characteristics of the sales cycle, the rate of follow-ups for completing transactions may vary.

However, contacting a prospective client at least 3-5 times is generally advised before quitting the sale.

Ideally, you should conduct the first monitoring 24 to 48 hours after the initial contact.

‍

To thank the client for their time and to find out if they have any queries or worries, a simple email or phone contact might serve as the follow-up.

Allow a few days without contacting the client again if they don't reply to your first follow-up.

A more tailored second follow-up should address any particular issues or objections the client may have had in the first contact.

On the second follow-up, if the consumer still doesn't answer, it could be time to attempt a new tactic, like a price reduction or a free trial.

The win may come in the form of a breakup email. It's an email in which you bid the prospect farewell. Here, you are the one getting up and leaving.

Additionally, this follow-up could pique the attention of potential customers who were initially interested but needed the opportunity to answer.

After many attempts and no response, it may be wise to move on and concentrate on other possible clients.

Pick Your Channel for Sales Follow-up

Sales follow-up channels vary by company, product, and client. However, these sales follow-up channels may work for you.

Email: Professional and personal email are shared sales follow-up methods. It's affordable and automatable.

Phone: Following up with customers via phone is more personal. It lets them ask questions in real-time.

Texting: Customers who appreciate brief contact may respond well to texting. It might remind them of promotions, events, or needs.

Social Media: Use LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook to follow up with consumers and provide company information. It may also create consumer connections.

Video Calls: As remote work becomes more widespread, video calls are becoming more popular for follow-up. Face-to-face connection helps create consumer trust and rapport.

In sales, persistence is crucial, but it's also possible to be obnoxious.

You can elicit a response without offending your prospects if you remain nice, plan your touches, commit to the connection, and use several contact methods. To follow up with prospects and increase sales, pick the right time to reach them.

Choose The Right Time

According to a 2024 study by Call Hippo, the appropriate days of the week to call prospects are still Wednesday and Thursday.

This is unexpected. But, on Fridays, most individuals are getting ready for the weekend and aren't looking to build a relationship with a salesperson.

Buyers are settling into work mode and making plans for Monday of next week.

People have had time to become used to their workweek by the middle of the week, so your call will seem like a smooth process as they attend to urgent things.

Additionally, timing everything is also an art.

Research has shown that 78% of customers purchase from the first business to answer their inquiries; therefore, the quicker you can do so, the better.

Other data to help you master timing are:

An 80% reduction in lead qualification is experienced by sales teams that respond after five minutes.
The ideal time to cold call is in the late afternoon, between 4 and 5 pm, from 9 am to 6 pm.
5 to 6 pm is the worst time to conduct a sales call.
The morning period between 10 and 11 would be the second-best time to complete a sales call.

Understand how to follow up in sales. Otherwise, your efforts may hit rock bottom.

Personalize Your Approach

Are you engaging consumers with email personalization? Customers benefit from personalized email marketing.

When marketers utilize personalization in their ads, 89% experience a positive return on investment.

Start customizing your emails immediately with these top suggestions.

Customizing Subject Lines: If you don't personalize your subject lines, you're not showing clients you care about their issues.

Personalizing emails may boost sales by encouraging consumers to contact you.

Personalizing your subject lines shows your viewers that you offer essential, relevant information that meets their demands.

Customize your Call-To-Action: Every email should contain a CTA. Clear, simple, and audience-specific call-to-actions are essential.

Personalizing your CTA boosts audience engagement. It also highlights content likely to interest your customer and makes relevant information visible.

Doing so streamlines the user experience and makes it simpler to browse your digital platforms.

Go Straight To The Point

The point? Your product is the remedy for the problem your prospect is experiencing. Because clients are unlikely to approach just one source, speed is crucial because 50% of all sales go to the first vendor to respond.

Use response speed to beat your competitors

‍

Remind them of their pain point as soon as possible and that you are the most incredible person to ease it.

You can approach this by either sharing an informative article, e-book, or market study to prove your point.

Another is a case study demonstrating how your product has benefited others. Alternatively, it might be a deal or a free consultation.

Don't give them too much, though.

Always think of prospects as the company presidents who are very busy and have only given you a sliver of their time. What kind of content would be most helpful and impactful at this particular stage of the buying process? Send that to them.

Explain that they should move quickly and take only a little time.

Provide Insightful And Valuable New Information

Prospects don't want to feel pressured. Even if you're a salesperson, hard selling no longer works.

Instead, engage and deliver value with each follow-up to improve outcomes. Thus, neither you nor your product matter. Your prospects do.

Value-added follow-ups include:

Start by asking the prospect how they are and how business is going—try to recall anything noteworthy about each prospect.

Imagine your prospect informed you they were launching a new product. Ask them about it next time.

Remembering individuals and demonstrating your care builds the personal connection that generates sales.

Always discuss the prospect's pain areas and challenges. You're selling more than a product. You market a solution.

In your follow-up email, link to a relevant article, blog post, or video that closely relates to the prospect and their difficulties.

By giving relevant material, you demonstrate that you want a long-term partnership rather than a hasty sale.

Reconnect with a prospect by sending a special offer or limited-time discount.

The value may be non-monetary. Every time you talk to a prospect, give something beneficial.

Keep Track Of Your Follow-ups

Get to know where you stand with prospects. Only 7% of companies in a sample of 433 companies answered within the first five minutes of the submission of the form.

Within five working days, more than 50% of respondents still need to answer. According to the study, the median response time was 1.8 days, with an average response time of 2.5 days.

To keep track of emails, answer questions immediately. Snooze or file other emails.

Use various email addresses for different purposes. Separating sales emails from customer support and personal communications may help you monitor them. That makes email management simpler.

Use email CRM/help desk software to track company deals and duties. A CRM like Pigeon for Gmail may help you manage many emails, particularly incoming queries.

Tag emails with transaction status, automate outreach, make follow-up reminders, and communicate with coworkers.

Delete or unsubscribe from unwanted emails. Having fewer emails helps manage them, too:

Unsubscribe from any unwanted newsletters or promotions.

You may improve how to do sales follow-up by:

1 - Setting reminders for timely follow-up.

Set weekly or monthly follow-up reminders. Instead of looking up who to follow up with, be alert.

2: Using premade replies to write emails faster.

Make email templates for frequently requested queries. Copy/paste and send. Pigeon for Gmail makes saving templates easier.

3: Using automated email follow-up software.

Pigeon for Gmail sends automatic responses at your convenience.

4: Improving time management.

If responding to an email takes five minutes or less, it may be quicker to react immediately rather than "saving it for later." Recall that opening an email takes time. If you mark it unread, you must reread it to recall what it was about. Use a CRM system or a spreadsheet to keep track of your follow-up activities and schedule future follow-ups.

Measuring And Optimizing Your Follow-up Strategy

‍

When you keep track of your objectives, it is simpler to determine whether everything is proceeding as planned. According to Salesforce, 57% of survey participants named excellent content as the primary factor driving sales.

Goal-tracking can also assist in clarifying concepts, concentrating efforts, ensuring time and resources get used effectively, and raising the likelihood that you will accomplish your

company's most crucial goals.

However, knowing how to follow up and measure performance might take a lot of work.

Here are tips for measuring and optimizing your follow-up strategy:

Set goals: Define success before you can evaluate your follow-up approach about B2B sales, relationships, or anything else. Know your objectives to track your success.

Track interactions: Record all customer follow-ups. Calls, emails, and meetings are possible. CRM systems can help you handle this data. Measure response rates to follow-up messages. How many people liked your follow-ups? Who didn't reply? It will indicate the effectiveness of your follow-up strategy.

Try alternative methods: Try several follow-up methods to discover what works. Try multiple channels (phone, email, social media, etc.) or experiment with follow-up time and frequency.

Personalize your follow-ups: Generic follow-ups are less likely to work. Use consumer data to customize your communications. Use your data to strengthen your follow-up plan. Change what's working and try new methods.

These recommendations will help you assess and refine your follow-up approach to strengthen client connections and increase revenue. It would be best if you improved your follow-up tactics for better outcomes.

How do you go about that?

‍

8 Sales Follow-up Techniques for Revenue Growth

Can we all agree that salespeople don't follow up because they don't want to look needy or clingy? No one loves to feel rejected, so it's a fear-related issue. If a prospect has not responded to your initial email, you may assume they are uninterested.

Spoiler alert: This is not always accurate. It may be an opportunity for them to learn more about you.

In fact, an estimated 60% of customers seek sales support during the contemplation stage after researching your product and your competitors on Google.

Multichannel Method for Your Following-up

So you've sent two or three follow-up messages to the potential customer but have not received a response.

If you keep calling and they are constantly too busy to talk to you, you could have more success sending an email instead.

Don't limit yourself to only phone and email. Find prospects on multiple sites.

Still, you can use LinkedIn to follow up if you belong to that network. Experiment with several follow-up approaches if you need to figure out what someone likes.

An Aberdeen Group research study, as reported by Digital Commerce 360, found that businesses with the best omnichannel customer engagement retain 89% of their customers, while those with poor strategies only keep 33%.

Omnichannel touchpoints are good for you

People have varied communication styles, and what catches one person's attention may be overlooked by another.

On the other hand, respect someone's preference for a specific mode of communication.

You will not endear yourself to a prospect if you continue to contact them after they have said that they prefer to do all business through email.

Define the Next Steps

What is one of the most common follow-up errors salespeople commit? You need to articulate the prospect's next steps in the process clearly.

For instance, agree to contact the prospect again in a week or two if they need time to review your offer with their team. If your product demo went well and the potential customer was interested, schedule a follow-up right away to keep the process moving forward.

Be as detailed as you can. "I'll call you next week" is ambiguous. How about I call you at 9:30 on Wednesday? It’s so much better.

Choose Subject Lines Carefully

Email follow-up success depends on the subject line.

As said, top executives and decision-makers have hundreds, if not thousands, of emails in their mailboxes.

Thus, you must entice them to open your email. The first thing email recipients see is the subject line.

Optimizing the subject line is essential to getting recipients to open the email.

Hyper-personalized email subject lines resulted in more email opens than non-personalized subject lines, according to Gartner's 2021 Digital IQ Email Benchmarks report.

Sadly, 69% of prospects consider the subject line a reason to mark an email as spam.

"Just checking in" or "following up" won't work. These are simple to delete. Instead, write something intriguing that makes people want to hear more. Use the recipient's name in your subject line.

Be Respectful After Breaking Up

The prospect has yet to respond after three to four attempts.

Send a "breakup" email. Telling them you're giving up is a good idea. Informing a prospect that you will cease wasting their time is fine.

This breakup email works:

Hi James,

I hate bothering you, but I've called and emailed you many times. I can help you locate {product name}. Your assistance request is closed for now. Contact me at {phone number} and {email}.

Best,

Andy

Unresponsive prospects usually respond to this email. Why?

Basic psychology. Prospects are busy and need you to keep trying to reach them.

The goals of these emails are to either elicit a response from the prospect or permanently remove them from your sales funnel. Even though breakup emails can have up to 76% response rates, not understanding when to let go can hurt you more than it helps.

Respect the decision a prospect makes and move on.

Initiate Prospecting

Sales calls are not a brand-new or inventive technique to generate leads.

Yet, many salespeople need to catch up on crucial information that may make their initial contact more successful.

Researching your contact's background, needs, and overall market will be worthwhile in the long run.

You may make your initial call into a more meaningful and relevant interaction by taking your time and not jumping right in.

Implementation follows development and testing. Do this by communicating with your marketing and sales departments.

It will help both parties agree on a goal and strategy.

Check your approach for improvements. To gauge progress, check KPIs daily.

Finally, maintain testing and incorporate sales and marketing team comments into your approach to improve it.

Target the Company in B2B

Selling to small companies may require just one contact.

If you're marketing to more prominent companies, you need to create connections with all the decision-makers.

You just have to get your B2B sales strategy right.

Developing personal working relationships with all team members is challenging. Focus on the business, not the possibility.

You may connect with a prospect through golf, but you must show him how your product or service can enhance his and his team's jobs.

When pitching to more prominent corporations, you must emphasize your post-sale support and differentiate your product or service from the hundreds of comparable companies.

Keep It Short ‍

Keep your follow-up with new clients brief and to the point; avoid droning on for too long.

Due to hectic schedules, sales calls might be shorter than anticipated. As a result, try to be deliberate, concise, and valuable as quickly as possible.

Do this by making sure your follow-up email contains at most six lines in total. Additionally, a follow-up phone call should generally last 10 minutes.

It sounds brief, yes. But you need to be straightforward as you have a limited time to attract your prospect's attention and prompt them to act.

Automate Your Sales Follow-up

Chatbots, CRM systems, and marketing automation technologies from AI Bees automate sales follow-up. Businesses that incorporate high levels of automation into their sales process generate 16% more leads than those that use little or no automation.

Automation plays a significant role in follow-up success rates

Some particular uses of these tools are:

Chatbots: AI bees' chatbots help leads immediately, automating sales follow-up. Chatbots may answer basic queries, propose products, and plan meetings. AI bees' chatbots replicate human communication, making them easier for leads to interact with.

AI bees' marketing automation technologies automate sales follow-up emails. Opened emails or website visits may trigger email sequences. AI bees' marketing automation technologies simplify email campaign setup and management.

AI bees provides tailored assistance and coaching to improve sales follow-up. Their specialists can help you improve, apply best practices, and measure outcomes.

AI bees' chatbots, CRM systems, and marketing automation technologies speed up follow-up and boost productivity while preserving a human touch with your prospects and customers.

‍

Sales Follow-up Templates

Guides do wonders when you need somewhere to start or end.

You can engage prospects and keep them progressing through the sales funnel with the help of the five follow-up email templates provided below (grouped by use case).

Here we go.

Case in Point: Following the First Meeting

You reviewed your sales presentation with the prospect. You had an excellent meeting and departed assured that you had launched a transaction. However, you have yet to get an answer three days later. Avoid the standard "gentle reminder" or "touching base" email. The idea here is to continue the previous discussion and offer a clear basis for a response.

Use one of these sales follow-up email templates to convince prospects to purchase from you.

‍Use Case: Confirming Value-Based Pricing Information

When marketing a product or service that needs a customized proposal or pricing, you must follow up after the first meeting.

It is your opportunity to market your services (one more) and restate your price possibilities.

In this case, here's an email template you may use.

‍

Case in Point: After a Trigger Event

You should move quickly and provide them with a clear call to action if your analytics reveal that a prospect opened an email, clicked on a link, and visited your website.

You'll have a higher chance of getting them through your sales funnel if you do it that way.

To get some ideas, glance at these templates.

‍

Use Case: Right After Leaving a Voicemail

You will leave a message if you attempt to contact a lead but are unsuccessful. It's usually a good idea to send an email as a follow-up in this situation.

An email and voicemail combination offers the potential customer an additional push.

It demonstrates your dedication to capturing their attention and places you at the top of their list of priorities.

Look at this illustration to learn how to write an email.

‍

Use Case: Mistaken Identity

Regarding sales, finding the proper individual to speak with is half the battle. It's crucial to determine immediately whether you're speaking with the incorrect individual. You may devote more time to persuading the decision-maker.

See how to ask a prospect whether they are the correct contact (and who you should be speaking to if they are not) by looking at this email template.

‍

Email follow-ups aid in developing relationships with prospects, enhance your brand's perception, and inspire potential customers to buy.

Boost Conversion Follow-up Rates With AI bees

AI bees can assist you in increasing client conversions during follow-ups.

We tailor follow-up conversations using past data, strengthening consumer relationships and boosting conversions.

We can answer your customers' questions rapidly, reducing wait times and improving customer service.

The consistency of AI bees is unparalleled. We can provide consistent replies, building client confidence.

We can also begin follow-up interactions with prospective clients to keep them interested in your product or service.

Talk to us to improve customer follow-up conversions—build improved relationships and conversion rates using artificial intelligence to give tailored, consistent, and fast service.