Today’s topic is this follow up frequency follow up tactics and just all about follow up. I want to talk about an answer to that question of “Michael how much is too much? Or the complete opposite Michael?” “How much follow-up is not good?”
So let’s talk about this. I’ve done a few episodes and around follow up and follow up tactics, but I really haven’t looked at the frequency question of what’s too much or what’s not enough. Let me kind of talk through that a little bit. But before I really go down that path, the one big thing that I want to throw out there is that there will be a direct correlation to your increased or decreased sales when it comes to managing leads based on not just the frequency, but the speed. And that is one of the areas that is, I would say, most overlooked.
So lead comes in regardless of what local business you’re in. Okay, great, you get a lead in now what?
Now depending on your systems and processes, and if you’ve got any marketing automation and different things like that, sometimes some stuff can get triggered. And you’ve got emails going out text messages to mean different things like that. Or the lead could get instantly sent over to someone, and you’re taking a look, you’re analyzing it and figuring out kind of what some of the next steps are.
Usually, that is the first area that you need to work on. The speed of your follow up is essential. Leads do not want to wait hours and hours, if not days, to hear back from you. And one of the experiments that I’m looking at doing is to start a fictitious home remodeling company.
For example, and to invest some resources and paid traffic, just to show that I can generate leads quickly. But to show that most of these people when I call them, they’re gonna say, “well, geez, I called for the remodeling companies before you, and either no one returned my call. I scheduled some appointments, people didn’t come out.”
And again, I’m not trying to pick on the remodeling industry, that this is something that you’re going to hear many times. It’s in pretty much any particular type of serviced based niche. The service industry as a whole is sadly notorious for not delivering amazing service. So if you look at step one, you’ve got to be calling these leads, texting them, emailing them within minutes of the lead coming in minutes. And if you physically don’t have a way to do that real time, then what I would want you to do is to get that automation. And you’re going to want to have an automated tool, send out an email, but the email should look personalized. And you’re going to want to have an automated text message go out. And the text message is going to look personalized and have an emoji and, and fun things like that.
You want to make sure that if you know that you’re not able to hit that goal of minutes, when it comes to follow up, you need to get that system and that software in place.
So going back to the initial question of how much is too much, how much is too little? There really is no maximum until someone tells you do not call me ever again remove me from your list. If someone raises their hand for you. This is not, I’m not referring to cold stuff. I’m referring to someone wrote you back in a cold email someone filled in a Facebook ad someone responded to direct mail campaign, someone called in to inquire about your pricing, for example, those are people that are raising their hands, and they are responding to something and then they’re then changing to an inbound type of lead. So they’ve responded.
It wasn’t just you’ve called them out of the blue and they had no clue who you are. They at least have some kind of interest. From there, you’ve got to play the game of attention.
I want you to call them, email them, text message them each and every day.
I just did it with one of our leads this morning. And I just sent a proposal out and followed up yesterday and didn’t hear anything. I sent another text this morning and I related to the proposal that was signed because he didn’t have the proposal. And when maybe it went to spam or it just triggered something and reminded him, your follow up is typically never enough. And whether you’re doing it or you’ve got some salespeople on your team that are doing it, it’s rarely ever enough.
I like to look at least seven to 12 different touches during a one week time period. So lead comes in, you should be calling, emailing, texting, minimum one time each during day one, if not twice. And then going down to once a day for the next couple of days. And then you get on it every other day and you continue to follow up – text, email, call, direct mail, physical mail, lumpy mail, Facebook Messenger, LinkedIn, Instagram.
You have to be staying on top of these people. And it’s not that they’re ignoring you. It’s not that they’re not interested. It’s people are inherently busy.
I mean, I get asked by vendors all day long can I test their new CRM or their new email tool or whatever it is, and I rarely do respond. And there was one vendor that has been sending me emails for probably six months, and trying different tactics and things like that. And I’ve read a lot of the emails that I haven’t responded to. And the one tactic that actually put me over the edge was he said “Let me put my money where my mouth is, and I’ll send you five days of ground hot coffees at Starbucks.” And they use a tool called like, Thankfully, or something like that, which I’ve never heard of, but I actually really liked the tool and now I’m setting up for the tool. Because it was just a really interesting way and it’s $15 or whatnot. I was hoping it was for a grand a white mocha which is five $6 so now that’s okay. It’s still $15 for nothing, but I agreed to get out of the meeting and see the demo. And it’s just he continued to follow up.
Just because someone doesn’t respond to you instantly doesn’t mean they’re not interested. And I hear this all the time, obviously being in the lead generation space. So Michael, these leads are terrible. No one’s responding. I sent him an email. I didn’t hear from them. My next question is:
- How many emails did you send?
- How many text messages did you send?
- How many times did you try calling them?
- What did you send them in the mail?
And usually, the response is, I sent one email and I tried calling once and how many plus times, within a week, week and a half. You have to be on top of these people like white on rice.
Now the other piece of this equation is, let’s say you don’t hear from them for two weeks. You hear nothing. You try 10,15, 20 times in all different ways. I want you to then move them into an every other week. Whether it’s an email or a text message or something like that to continue to stay top of mind, because one of these days, I promise you, one of those leads or many of those leads are going to circle back.
I’ve had people that have been getting my newsletter that I sent every Thursday for the last two years, that they finally write a message in. After reading it for two years, follow up is critical, not only in the speed, but also the frequency again, 10, 15, 20 times over a week, a week and a half in different ways.
If you execute this and most of you are not going to because you’re going to say it’s way too much. I promise you, your sales will grow.
