Is Follow-up an Art? Or an Attitude?

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Is Follow-up an Art? Or an Attitude?

By Andy Paul

Not that long ago I read a blog posting about the art of the follow-up. I liked the general concept presented by the author, that there are skills we can all learn that will improve the effectiveness of our sales follow-up. It was hard to argue with his premise.

However, I believe that the author put the cart before the horse. While there are skills to be learned that, if regularly practiced, will improve the quality of your follow-up, there is one big caveat that trips up many, if not most, sellers. That catch is that before you can practice the art of the follow-up you actually have to pick up the phone and call the prospect.

I have read studies and statistics about sales follow-up that are uniformly depressing. At the high-end they estimate that 80% of sales leads are never followed up. On the low-end they claim 30% of sales leads are never followed up. (Personally, I think that anything above 0% is a failure of management, but I’ll leave that for another rant. I mean post.) No matter which end of the statistical spectrum you subscribe to, the bottom line is that follow-up suffers more from inattention that ineffectiveness.

To frame this in an even grimmer light, seminal studies, such as the Insidesales.com/MIT Lead Response Management Study, unequivocally demonstrate that it is not enough to simply follow-up. Effectiveness of follow-up is directly tied to how quickly follow-up occurs. The conclusion of the MIT study is stunningly self-evident but its lessons continue to be blithely ignored by the vast majority of sellers. The study demonstrated that the longer you take to follow-up the less likely you are to actually contact the prospect. In short, any interest a prospect has in talking to you quickly diminishes once they have reached out to you.

Therefore, the central issue in effective follow-up is attitudinal. A seller simply has to commit to take action. Quickly. Put aside thoughts of technique until you take an action that would benefit from it.

With clients I like to use the term “equivalence” to describe how they should treat follow-up. Ask yourself this question: how do you want a seller to follow-up with you? If you are interested in a company’s products and you submit an inquiry, what are your expectations for follow-up? You must have some expectation the company would get back to you because you wouldn’t have taken the time to reach out to them otherwise. Apply an equivalent expectation to your own, or your sales team’s, follow-up efforts.

Early on in the process to publish and promote my book I decided that I would accelerate my learning curve by hiring an experienced consultant that could help me bring my book to market with a bang. I attended a number of conferences on book marketing and met with some book marketing experts who are considered by many to be luminaries in their field. I had the book and the budget to hire the right resource. I met first with Luminary #1, who loved the idea of my book and was excited to talk in more depth about how she could help me. We set a time for a follow-up phone call. She never called and never followed up. Luminary #2 was also interested in helping me get my book to market and his follow-up was as non-existent as his counterpart’s. However, he did take my card and was thoughtful enough to stick my name onto about a dozen of his mailing lists that I have had to unsubscribe from.

In follow-up attitude precedes art just like form follows function.

I recently searched online for pricing information on a particular SaaS application that I wanted to use for my business. The vendor offered up only two service options their website: Professional (Individual) and Enterprise. Frustratingly, the company’s website contained no pricing information on either option and no way to purchase the product. I filled in a web form asking for pricing information. Two weeks later I got an email response from a sales manager stating that if I wanted price information I had to set up a phone call with her to go over my requirements. Two weeks. In the meantime, I had purchased an alternative solution.

The art of follow -up is less important than the act of follow-up. Commit to being in the game first and then work on your craft.