Content Crooner

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Maintain consistent follow-up with your prospects and never let another lead slip through the cracks again. The most challenging part of marketing is to generate the initial lead. You’ll improve efficiency and sales while getting the most out of your budget when you use the power of follow-up to capitalize on your leads. Fortune is in the follow-up!

Before we dig in, it’s worth clarifying that follow-up comes in countless forms. Any time you make some type of connection with a prospect, current client or past client after initial contact it can be considered following up. Common methods of following up include: call, e-mail, newsletter, postcard, and text message.

Last Bird Gets the Worm

Follow-up repositions you and helps you return to the front of your prospects’ minds instead of the dark, cobwebbed recesses. It’s actually a fairly simple theory. That which the mind learns or processes last is also the same thing that it recalls the quickest. If you’re dead even with another company in terms of price and quality of product or service, then your business will almost always be chosen over your competitor simply because you were the most recent contact.

Plus, you know how crazy things can get with your business—sometimes people just lose your contact information and will appreciate you getting in touch with them.

Natural Procrastination Breaks Businesses

Unless you’re Paris Hilton, people are natural procrastinators when it comes to buying products or services. It’s your responsibility to move them from procrastinator to proactive consumer. Often enough, what many of those fence-sitters, looky-loos, tire kickers and generally unassertive people need is a simple follow-up.

If someone doesn’t buy your product right away, then the chances of them motivating themselves to once again visit your offer rapidly decline. But if you get your offer right back in front of them then you will significantly increase the probability of getting their business. Following up creates a spark that reignites their interest and motivation.

Another way to look at it is this: Aside from Vegas, most people don’t get married the same day they meet. Especially for higher end products and services, you will need to court your prospects.

Friends Follow Up with Each Other

For any prospects who might be a tad reluctant to move forward due to doubt or skepticism, a friendly follow-up could be all that they needed to feel confident in buying your product or service. It shows you care about their needs. People buy from those they believe genuinely care about them over others any day of the week.

Follow-up also serves as an additional touch point. You promote customer loyalty with each and every communication and touch point you establish.

Plug Money Losing Leaks

You can also take this opportunity to be very candid with your prospect and ask them what prevented them from making the purchase. You’d be surprised at how much helpful feedback you can get just by doing this, and catch a lot of sales-killing errors you might be making. Few things fuel a person’s desire to write more than anger or frustration. Let them vent and you’ll pick up some key areas where you can improve your sales process, and keep your prospects moving smoothly through your sales funnel.

As part of this, you must pay special attention to your sales funnel at all times. Study your website analytics to find potential points where your prospects might be slipping through the cracks. For example, if a website visitor clicked all the way through to your shopping cart page and then just disappeared, testing a different website layout may be the answer. By incorporating follow-up tools and actively collecting feedback, and pairing that with your Web analytics, you will be able to plug all the leaks and maintain the fastest boat in the fleet.

To your success,
Andrew Rossillo

Andrew Rossillo is Content Crooner’s Marketing Blogger and Staff Writer. He’s ready to put his years of copywriting and online marketing experience to work for your business—he’ll help you get noticed!