Surfside Group

What are you doing to keep prospects in your sales pipeline even when they are not ready to buy now? Follow up failure is what happens when you get too busy working with existing clients and hot prospects that you fail to cultivate those who could buy from you at some point in the future. It’s a common occurrence, but it does not need to be!

Sales efforts should be focused on the opportunities that are most likely to buy now, while marketing should be a continuous communication with prospects that educates and builds a relationship so they are comfortable with buying from you in the future.

If you automate much of your marketing effort, you can increase your sales significantly. We’ve seen this occur in several cases (including our own!). There are various solutions in the market that can be used, but the one we’ve worked with the most is Infusionsoft .

Just imagine these scenarios:

Jill is someone you’ve never met. She somehow finds your website and looks at the information about your products and services and likes what she sees. She knows she isn’t ready to buy from you right now, but may have a need later.

Scenario 1 - Jill bookmarks your website and will perhaps call you some day in the future when she decides she really needs to buy from you (if she even remembers that she added your website to her favorites list). Follow up failure has occurred.

Scenario 2 - She fills out your "Contact Us" or "Request a Proposal" form on your website. You send Jill an email or perhaps even call her. You have a good conversation and send her a proposal. When you follow up with her a few days later, she says she will keep your company in mind, but she’s not ready to commit for at least another several months. You put a reminder on your calendar to call her in 90 days, but you get busy and forget. After 120 days pass, you are going through your old task list and see the reminder to call Jill is still there. You call her and she tells you that she bought 2 weeks ago from your competitor. Follow up failure has occurred.

Scenario 3 - Jill downloads a free report from your website that helps her understand some important facts about your industry. This prompts your automated marketing system to begin sending her information on a regular basis that is informative and valuable to her. Of course, it also always includes information about how to buy from you. Jill is not ready to buy from you until 15 months from now, but unless she requests to not receive information from you anymore, she will continue to receive automated email, postcards, and letters from you. One day, 15 months from now, your phone rings and it’s Jill. She’s ready to buy. She knows exactly what your company can do for her and she has the budget. You just made a sale that in the other scenarios would have fallen through the cracks. Marketing automation is critical to growing any business!

Don’t let follow up failure be the reason your business does not grow this year.