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Sales Tip – Selling Without Follow-up with Your Customers or Prospects Gets Poor Sales Results

Written by: Patricia Weber

Article Overview: Salespeople can get a selling edge, even during an economic down turn, by using the same extraordinary follow-up with customers and prospects alike, following some dog treat guidelines.

Sales Tip – Selling Without Follow-up with Your Customers or Prospects Gets Poor Sales Results

Salespeople can always learn valuable behaviors from dogs. With my dog’s recent illness we had to stop her treats while the veterinarian ruled out one diagnosis from another. If she wasn’t in anguish about it, I was. Then I began to wonder, “Am I keeping treats from my prospects or my customers?” Embarrassingly, it’s my customers who might be going without a follow-up treat at times. But now I have ideas of what and how to treat both prospects and customers.

It matters what kind of treat. The reality is if you are in sales, a telephone call, an email, a card, an in-person visit, these are appropriate treats of “I care about you,” when you aren’t trying to just sell something. Actually it does and it doesn’t matter what kind of attention you pay to customers or prospects. Just like your dog likes one brand over another, your customer and prospect have a preference of how you communicate too.

Be sure your treat is appetizing. Here’s where your customer and prospects preference comes in. How often do they prefer to hear from you? How do they prefer it – in person, by telephone, with a card, with email? Just find out and fashion your follow-up with their preferences.

Try different treats until one hits the sweet spot. About three years ago I increased my follow-up with written, real, greeting cards. My business took a 30% jump in that year. At that time, it was more effective than a telephone call and outweighed results of email. What is your customer’s sweet spot?

All sales treats are not created equal. Each customer and prospect has his or her preference. Even salespeople have their preference of how they stay in touch. The best follow-up is to take a queue from your customer and prospect preferences. The next best follow-up is for a salesperson just to have a planned and acted on system for follow-up.

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Article Tags: anguish, diagnosis, dogs, email a card, greeting cards, matter what kind, person visit, preference, prospects, queue, salespeople, salesperson, sweet spot, veterinarian



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Top sales skills - Qualifying Fast to Avoid Wasting Sales Time Do you chase after your prospects until they tell you yes or no? Do you ever tell your prospects "No", as in "No, I am not going to sell to you"? There are many things in selling that you do not and will not be able to control. The one thing that you do have control over is your time and how you choose to use it. Motivating Prospects Qualifying goes beyond budget, authority, and need. You want to sell to prospects who *want* to buy from you. Finding prospects that need our products usually is not difficult. Finding those who really want our products though can be very hard if we wait for them to come to us. Selling to People Outside Your Comfort Zone Most salespeople who are "people persons", already think that they are good at this. Let me ask you a question. When you last lost a sale, how was your rapport with the key person who decided against you?
Re: Online Sales and Marketing vs Traditional - [quote="ltrahan":31w9r2iz]Hi Evan, I am noticing that many of the posts in the Sales/Marketing section deal with online marketing, SEM and and SEO and Affiliates. I was wondering if it might be a good idea to separate that section into two; 1) Online Sales and Marketing; 2) Traditional Sales and Marketing[/quote:31w9r2iz] I second the request...
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Hello From Marietta GA! - Hello All! My name is Tim Naylor and I am in Direct Sales! I am glad I have found EC's sites and I hope to learn and share a lot!


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