3 Most Effective Ways to Follow-up with Leads
To follow up with leads or not, is the question.
Indeed, this is a crucial matter that every entrepreneur must answer. After you have sent out all your lead magnets and your target market has taken up your free offers, they tell you that they are not ready to work with you yet. Perhaps they don’t have the budget yet, or their team is still in transition, or they still need more convincing. Regardless of their reasons, as entrepreneurs, we are already familiar with these responses. So, do you just let them go or not?
According to this survey, an average of only 2% of sales are made at the first point of contact with the target market. The rest of the 98% percent would remain hanging in the balance, and it will be up to you as the business owner whether to follow up or not. Now considering that 98% is a major figure, it would be a huge loss of sales if you don’t do any follow-up, right? Hence, it is no longer a question of whether you should follow up or not, but how you follow up on your leads.
If you are also asking this question, then you’ve come to the right place as I unpack the three most effective ways to follow up on your leads. Read further to find out.
1. Phone Calls
Calling back your leads has been the most basic and foundational of doing follow-up. Calling leads is perceived as the most direct and personal way to follow up with potential clients. One great thing about calling your leads is the assurance of hearing a real and live person at the other end of the line. Being able to converse with another person builds trust and relationships.
Following up on leads through phone calls also works best if you have prior knowledge about your lead or you were previously acquainted on another occasion. This would make your call less foreign and your intent more acceptable. If you have established an acquaintance with your leads such as through previous 1:1 interaction, following them up in a call could prove advantageous to you.
2. Email Outreach
In this digital age, sending out emails could be convenient, especially since they can be accessed anytime and anywhere. This goes on to say that an email outreach campaign is an effective way to reach out to your leads quickly and efficiently without having to call each and every one of them.
When it comes to doing email outreaches, here are important reminders to take note of:
Ensure that your emails are short and concise. You would not want your lead to feeling off about reading a very lengthy product description or follow-up.
Make it personal. Address your leads on a first-name basis to establish a sense of familiarity and personal nature. If you are sending a bulk email, you can automate the part that indicates the recipient’s names, so that you don’t have to consume your time manually typing each of their names.
Use a catchy subject line. The subject line acts as the headline of your email. This is the first thing that your recipient sees, and if this doesn’t capture their attention, then the chance to deliver your follow-up message would be missed.
3. Social Media Engagement
The advent of social media has done a lot of favors for different businesses especially those that engage with their clients online. Because of the different social media platforms, entrepreneurs can now interact with their followers and leads in a more casual manner.
We are familiar with the names Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn as the common social media platforms available today. These platforms have provided us with different ways to engage with our leads at different levels of the business, even as they also provide helpful resources for us to better help our clients in their journey. Social media is indeed powerful enough to help entrepreneurs build relationships with potential customers before they ever reach out for a sale.
Now that we have identified the most effective ways to follow up on our leads, here are additional tips that enable you to follow up on your leads the right way.
Stay consistent.
When following up on your leads, once or twice is not enough. You may have to do more than you should because every lead is different. What is essential is that you are consistent in communicating with them and making sure that you reach out to them at a time that you said you would.
Follow up moderately.
Consistent follow-up doesn’t mean every minute of every day. It means following up at the right frequency so as not to end up annoying your lead. You would also not want to put it off too late as your client might move to the competition instead. Be sensitive to your own niche as this will guide you on how frequently you should check back on your potential client.
Select the right platform.
While there are many tools and platforms you can use to follow up on your leads, it is still important to remember that every person is different. Some leads would prefer emails, others would like to be called, while others enjoy being interacted with on social media channels. Identifying the right platform helps you to reach them more effectively.
Provide value.
When you send out a follow-up message to your lead, always ensure that you deliver a valuable message. You can achieve this by highlighting how your product can benefit them in a way that is very specific to their struggles in life or in the business. Once you have addressed their pain points, then you will stand out against your competition.
The Bottomline
There is no easy path when it comes to following up on our leads, but there are proven and tested methods to make these series of follow-ups convert to sales. You may have to work on these methods by yourself or you might tap some help from other assistants who could make this process more efficient. Regardless of how you would do it, checking back with your potential client remains to be a crucial factor in your business if you want to reach some sales.
Do you need further support when it comes to utilizing online help to reach out to your leads? If you do, I’ll be happy to assist. Feel free to book a discovery call with me so you will know how I can get you through this.
Source: https://ircsalessolutions.com/insights/sales-follow-up-statistics/