Proper Follow Up To Sales Calls

In this solo episode, Jerry discusses the importance of proper follow-up after a sales call. He reflects on his experience and highlights the significance of showing expertise and agility when following up with potential new clients. Jerry emphasizes the balance between not following up at all and bombarding with emails. You can tune in to gain insightful tips on effective follow-up strategies in sales.

#salesprocess #salesstratergies # followupsales

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Jerry Bauer
Hospitality Cleaning 101 | Bauer Consulting
Jerry@hospitalitycleaning101.com

Transcript

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Jerry 0:05

Hello, this is Jerry with Cleaning Processes with Jerry. This is where I'm trying to start an online community with like minded individuals and companies to get together and share some ideas, tips, solutions. and even expand some of our markets. I work for chem station of Boston, covering the New England area. I also have a blog, Hospitality Cleaning 101, where I write different articles about sanitation within the food industry. Today, podcast because the last two have been geared more towards sales, got lot of emails, phone calls, ask me some questions. I also have four people ready to come on as guests. However, it's always easy until we can try to match up the times we can do this together. So with that said, I'm going to go solo and I'm going to go on a question that somebody had came to me and asked to do with follow up on sales calls. Being in sales, I'm as guilty as other people of not following up properly. First of all, when you do follow up, you're showing your expertise and your agility of making changes. I've had people come to my home, do a bid, do a survey, send me some pricing, back in the day it was snail mail, of course now it's email, and they never really follow up. They don't even follow up with an email saying, did you receive it? I just, it throws me off. That's all I can say. Then we have the other people, and I have fallen into this trap myself. Well, all you do is you're emailing the person every couple of days. Well, that doesn't work either. Why would you want to do that when, well, let's just take a look at your own email inbox. Go to your personal email inbox, look at the top 30 of the 30, how many of them are trying to sell you something, okay? There's some people that I love to follow, different advice, different tips, whatever, articles. My email inbox gets so full, it's delete, delete, delete, delete. Don't fall into the trap of just trying to follow up with email. Going back to the original sales call, where you're meeting the people, persons, maybe it might be at their business, their factory, whatever it might be, before leaving, make sure you get their cell phone. I also address it with them. Is it okay if I call you on your cell phone, or possibly even extra in advance, so that we can talk one day? About my findings that I sent to you. That's being totally professional and being able to follow up with them directly. They're more likely to answer a text. Then they will an email. They're most likely going to be able to answer a cell phone before they answer an email. The advantage of the phone call is then you can talk in real time. If you've ever gotten to that email where they come back with a question, you go back with an answer. They come back on a question before you know it, you're down some road. Rabbit hole, whatever you want to call it, you've gone off base. Best is in person phone call. Of course, today, now, coming out of COVID, we have Zoom. We can share screens, stuff like that. However, there's nothing wrong with a good old fashioned phone call. I wouldn't try to call their business line. I wouldn't try to call their business at all. I try not to email them. Go directly to the person. You're showing a lot more professionalism. You're going to be able to answer questions. If you text them in advance, they frequently can pull the numbers, have the proposal in front of them. Because if you just call them out of the blue, I don't have the numbers in front of me, I don't have the proposal. But if you text them a couple minutes in advance saying, I'm going to try to call you in a little bit, can we review the numbers I've sent you, makes it a lot more professional. Benefits. Of scheduling this in advance is also the best way. Again, as you're leaving the facility, I'll call it, set up a time. I'm gonna have you the number by next Wednesday. Do you believe a phone call on Friday, 10 o'clock? Will that work into your schedule? Can we go ahead and schedule it now? First thing, bring out your app, bring out your day timer, bring out your calendar right then and there. Then they feel you're much more professional also. If you get a time, then it's halfway done, where you know when the person is going to be expecting your phone call. They're going to more likely read the proposal. Because how many times have you sent a proposal and by the time you do get back to the person, what's the person said? Oh, I haven't read it yet. Well, constantly they did and sent it off onto their phone. file than has 50 other items they're reading. You want to be more professional of getting the exact time you can talk to them and follow up with them to answer their questions all again as I'm saying in real time. Not back and forth. Follow up appointment reinforces the sales process. It's one more leg of the whole thing. It makes the opportunity of the sales call advanced to the next stage. When you get them on the phone, you can actively listen to their voice, listen to their needs and the preferences. And you're going to tailor your answer to those needs frequently. It's nothing like we thought it was. What people come back to me and say, is there a problem or concern? Sometimes I wasn't even thinking because before you see somebody or call them, you always think, well, what if he says this? And what if they say this? What's my rebuttal for this? How can I adjust this? But if you get into real time dialogue, frequently, it's something that is easily attainable. Just yesterday, I was talking to somebody, and I put some numbers down, and they wanted different numbers. Orange was actually higher than my numbers. And I explained different things. Do you see how I'm trying to save you money here and you're offering this? And they said they came back with a reasoning why they wanted to do it that way. And that's what it takes to get your business. I think we can start as early as next week. Of course, then you're going for the close. So again, it has to be dialogue because they have questions. If they have questions to the thinking about it, how many times have you done all the work months go by and you just swear to yourself, they never looked at my proposal. They never looked at my pricing. They might've had you come in because it was the time for them. They were upset at their rep. They had a new rep come in. They had a delivery. They had a problem with data price increase that might've misunderstood. They get you in before they even look at your pricing. They've kissed and made up with her, their current vendor. And you really never got an opportunity. Again, it goes back with professional followup. It goes back with sales call. I'm going to call you on a certain day. I'm going to have the pricing to you on this day. Is it best that I come back? Because I'd really like to meet your team. I'd really like to see other people who are possibly in the background. Because there's people always in the background that we're not aware of. Because people tell you that they're the ones who make the buying decision. They tell you that, but they're really not the person in charge. It's another question, as you're leaving, who else is in this decision? Should they be copied in? Can I get their email address? When's a good day that they can meet? Takes a lot more questions than just questioning about the product you're trying to sell or their service you're trying to sell. You need to get more information. With more open ended questions. The role of the post call, the call afterwards is always a plan of action. Have a plan of action, ready to go, what are our next steps? We've gotten the price, we've answered the questions, what is our next step? Try to avoid more dialogue where it takes back and forth, emails. If there's a pricing issue, take care of it, probably while you still have them on the phone. Try not to go. And make it last longer where you have to call them back, email them back. And if they say, email me, try to avoid the email, try to avoid it very much. So I go back from many years ago where. I just never forget this story where, before email, a gentleman came up to me and said, well, you can have my business, most likely, but I need you to do the proposal, and I need you to fax it to me today. Well, people didn't have faxes in their cars, so I had to go to a place, I had to get on a library, I had to get on a computer. I had to type something out, I, the library couldn't fax it, I had to take it to another place. I faxed him. I worked all day on this proposal because he wanted it back to him by five o'clock. Of course, I called him the next day. What did he say? Well, I'm not going to tell you the answer yet because I called him about four days in a row and it was always the same answer. I haven't looked at it yet. I had spent all day to do what they had wanted and they hadn't even looked at yet. The gentleman was definitely running me in circles. I've had to do all over again. I would have said, stood right up to him right there and say, I cannot fax it to you by five because I don't know if I can get to a fax machine. However, I can meet you at eight o'clock in the morning and we'll have the pricing together. I'll have a copy for you. Can we have a cup of coffee? Take five minutes. Would have been a much smarter way than the way I handled it. It's just a complete day wasted. Improper follow up for me because I really didn't ask enough questions up front anyway. In conclusion, the proper way to follow up is through a phone call, if not a visit. They're close enough you can stop back by, of course. Of course, if they're miles away, and today we're in a global economy, it might even be somebody in a different country, of course, you can't go see them, but get a set time, you can call them, you can see them, or you can speak to them, meaning, don't just leave it. Where I will email it to you. Also, I can tell you that there's different programs for your email. It's just a program if you're using Outlook or even through Apple or there's many email programs that you can add on to a, I would say a third party. They have it built in the HubSpot. And you can get a HubSpot free account and just use it for email only. And the reason I recommend this is you can tell if the customer has opened up the email. Go back to the proposals, I've done proposals, I've sent them out by email, and it's never been opened. Foolish me. Make sure you immediately phone them, immediately call them, immediately go back by, find out what you missed, busy, family issues, but I no longer sit there, let's say for a week, on a Monday, oh, they're getting ready to read it, Tuesday, oh, they should be responding to me, Wednesday, I don't know why they haven't called me yet, Thursday, I bet you they're ready to buy today, I haven't even looked at it yet. So get an email program so when you are emailing you can see if the person or persons have read the email. It'll also tell you if you put a web link on there, if they've gone to the web link. Again, HubSpot has this for free. I've been using it for many years and it opened up my eyes. And made me realize that I was putting too much stock into email. Cause after you spent hours on a proposal coordinating and. And massaging every word, every sentence, and going it through, sending it for me, so that they, through Grammarly, to get the grammar straightened out. After doing all that work, they haven't even read it. Again, you start your follow up call at the initial call. Set the ground rules then, how you're going to follow up. Hope you enjoyed today's show. Please reach out, send me an email, come up with more suggestions. See Hopefully, this has helped you some, just bringing 40 years of experience to you. We learn by our failures. We learn by them. We all make mistakes. Happy selling out there, and hope to talk to you soon. Thank you for joining Jerry today, and we wish to thank you, the listener. If you like the information we are sharing here, please subscribe, like, and share. If you have a question that you would like answered on the show, then just please make that request in advance. Remember, the opinions shared on this podcast are Jerry's and he will be responsible for them. If you have any questions, ideas, or comments, or would like to become a guest, please send an email to Jerry at hospitalitycleaning101. com have a great day, remember to wash your hands for 20 seconds and stay safe.