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How Often Should You Contact Your Prospects?

Written by: Cheryl A. Clausen

Article Overview: A lot of salespeople struggle with this question. You want to contact them with enough frequency to make sure they don’t forget you. Yet you don’t want them to get annoyed with you and think you’re a pest.

How Often Should You Contact Your Prospects?

A lot of salespeople struggle with this question. You want to contact them with enough frequency to make sure they don’t forget you. Yet you don’t want them to get annoyed with you and think you’re a pest.

I challenge you to restructure your question. When you do the answer will be much easier. Change your question to “How can I contact my prospects?”

Now let’s take a closer look at both questions. In response to how often should you contact your prospects I would dare to suggest a whole lot more than you are now. At a bare minimum you should be contacting each and every prospect at least once a month. Twice a month would be better yet. And, depending on your market, once a week might be completely reasonable.

This increased frequency becomes both possible and realistic when you reevaluate how you make that contact. If you’re calling prospects once a month you’re making a mistake. In most cases calling is too direct for the prospect’s comfort.

They’re likely to get annoyed with you and tell you to stop calling them. Think about what’s important. What’s important is getting the prospect to immediately think of you when they’re ready to buy.

When you try to force yourself on a prospect it backfires and you lose. A better approach is to nurture a prospect. Just like you nurture a relationship with a new friend you want to nurture your relationship with the prospect so they can become your new friend.

Frequent contact is necessary. It just doesn’t have to be a direct in-your-face phone call. What’s important is the contact and the value that contact brings the prospect.

Expand the ways you make contact. You might include: post cards, letters, emails, audios, videos, etc. Then mix up the forms of contact creating interest and anticipation.

Track and measure the impact from each contact. Stop the ones that produce a negative result and learn from the contacts that product positive results. When you find the profitable combination reproduce the experience for every new prospect.

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Article Tags: anticipation, audios videos, bare minimum, closer look, mistake, negative result, new friend, phone call, post cards, profitable combination, prospects, relationship, salespeople, struggle, whole lot



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