I learnt a long time ago in business that conversion of sales
and leads is in the follow up. That a NO today, may in fact mean a maybe tomorrow; or a not right now, call me again in 6 months’ time - could be a Yes, I am ready to work with you.

Being committed to following up your prospects can be the difference between an ordinary business, and that of an extraordinary business. So here are my quick tips to help you follow up on today’s ‘maybe’.

Tip 1:
If you don’t have a Customer Relationship Management System (CRM) , put together a spreadsheet to track all of your warm prospects. On this spreadsheet, have the following headings as a minimum: Name, contact details, business, referral source and status update. Remember to keep this list up to date!

Tip 2:
Make a note in your diary to follow up any warm prospect within 90 days of your first contact.

Tip 3:
Follow up with these warm prospects but do so in a way that reflects you. Don’t feel you need to ‘sell’ in these follow ups if you’re not comfortable with that. It can be as simple as a ‘just checking in to see how you are’ call or email. I’ll be honest with you – I’m not comfortable with the push sell, but I am comfortable following up with warm contacts to see how they are doing, updating them on what I am doing & generally learning more about them. One thing that I also like to do is send potential clients useful information. So after I have learnt more about what is happening for them, if I see something that I think they may find interesting I will send it off to them.

Tip 4:
Keep following up within every 90 days until your lead becomes a client or your NO becomes a definite NO.

Here’s an example of how this worked for me - when I was consulting to large organisations, I made contact with a woman in one of our largest FMCG companies, (let’s call her Joan). When I called her for the first time, I got a NO, so I placed her on my warm follow up list and every 90 days I would ‘check in’ to see how she was doing, find out what was happening within the company and update her on my products and services. These calls lasted for no more than 5 mins. After about 14 months from our initial call, my phone rings one morning and it is Joan on the other end, letting me know that it is time for us to work together. So finally after being persistent and checking in, I landed a project with this company that was worth well over $100,000. One of the reasons that she called me was not only was I qualified for the project but I was the only person who was consistant with my follow up. So this taught me a very important lesson about the value of following up.

Feel free to share your tips here, around what you do to follow up your warm contacts.

And if you are ready to move your business from ordinary to extraordinary, check out my Fast Track Success Program. 
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