The One Reason of Not Closing the Deal in Sales

You have a great product or service and you are dreaming of growing your business. You’re working hard to keep up with the competition and you are confident. Still, you would like a higher input from your sales and marketing efforts.
You may think it’s all about the client and his reasons for not buying, but actually, the main reason of not closing a deal comes from inside your company: the lack of follow up.

Statistics provided by Marketing Doughnut show that your sales reps need to be in contact with a client at least five times after the initial sales discussion for him to say yes. Five!

Now ask yourself how many of your sales representatives follow up so thoroughly. Not so much, right? Well, it’s your job to organize the process and make sure your sales team in doing it the proper way.

To do that well you have to think about:

The leads.

First, you have to know and organize them by their importance. Is this client a friend you know will end up signing an agreement? Is this lead an acquaintance that may or may not transform into a friend? Or is this client a complete stranger you want to get acquainted to?
This classification, in friends, acquaintances or strangers, can help your sales reps project a specific tone in the way they are following-up. They should always treat friends with care and ask about their needs, acquaintances with curiosity and an open mind and strangers with respect and truthfulness.

The timing.

Dan S. Kennedy has a nice way of putting this in his book “No B.S. Ruthless Management of People & Profits”: “People buy when they’re ready to buy, not when you’re ready to sell.” This means that a thorough follow-up is a must. Keeping in touch with your acquaintance-clients and your “stranger” ones will give you the advantage of being there when they need and want to buy from you. You should also think about a follow-up system and tools to implement it. And that brings us to the next point…

The CRM magic.

You need to keep track of the importance of a lead, the position in the sales pipeline, the person of interest, the previous conversations, the bills, the number of follow ups etc. You could never do that by memory and you don’t have to. You need to use a tool that can comprise all the information you need and to make it available anytime. It’s essential to use a CRM solution for grouping leads in ways that suit a certain style for following up. Contact “friends” by phone or e-mail for feedback. Send the “acquaintances” and “strangers” relevant and valuable information to create the need or urgency.

The approach.

Your approach of following up has to include these three actions:

Educate. The prospective clients need to know about the value you can bring to their business. Send them the relevant and valuable information mentioned above and earn their trust.

Repeat. Your reps may fall into the “know all about it” trap. They learned by heart everything about the product or service they pitch and believe the client will understand all aspects after the first encounter. But the client rarely “gets it” the first time. Chances are against you so it’s better to explain them again and again.

Re-purpose. Some clients might respond to calls, some to e-mail or direct mail and some to invitations to events or webinars. Maximize your sales by including any possible way of starting or following a conversation.

Whatever product or service you are putting out there on the market, the follow up process needs close attention. Being tenacious can bring value to your business and increase substantially your revenues.

Do you go through these phases in organizing a proper follow up process? Feel free to share any good insights from your experience.