The importance of following up in the sales funnel process cannot be underestimated.
Did you know that, according to IRC Sales Solutions, just 2% of sales are made during the first point of contact?
So by not following up with sales leads, businesses could potentially lose 98% of their sales.
The sales team’s success is realized by increasing the number of new customers who sign up.
To achieve this, you need an effective follow-up strategy. Creating one and implementing it, however, is where things begin to get challenging.
Luckily, we’ve put together some top tips on all you need to know about successful follow-ups.
Let’s dive in and learn how to get a prospect’s attention and generate more leads.
The Importance Of Following Up With Your Leads
What determines how quickly your prospects will make a purchase is the frequency of your contact with them.
Through regular communication, you can learn more about your customers’ desires and help them attain them.
By regularly following up with customers, you can engage them effectively. Furthermore, constant contact keeps you in customers’ minds when they have a need you can meet.
Existing customers who are followed up on are more likely to consider new offerings.
When you respond quickly and identify your customers’ pain points, you have far higher chances of selling a product or service via marketing campaigns.
Sales Teams Follow-Up Statistics
Looking at statistics across the whole buying process is helpful when strategizing for generating leads.
The statistics available speak volumes about where you can focus your energy to pave the way for following up with potential customers.
We’ve gathered 15 statistics about sales follow-ups and the general process that you can keep in mind:
Texting
- Prospects that are engaged with text messages have a 40% higher chance of converting than those that aren’t;
- It is better to use texts as a follow-up rather than as the first point of initial contact. The likelihood that a prospect will ever become a lead decreases when a prospect texts them before calling on the phone;
- After contacting someone, texting them leads to a 112.6% higher lead to engagement conversion.
- Text messages have an open rate of 98% compared to email open rates, which is roughly 20%.
- Text messaging is also way more effective than emails, with a very high ROI of up to 680% and a retention rate of 99%!
- Email marketing campaigns have a 2x higher ROI compared to cold calling or trade shows;
- 33% of recipients open an email based on its subject line;
- Email usage statistics indicate that 91.5% of outreach emails are ignored.
Phone Calls
- 55% of high growth companies stated that cold calling is very effective;
- One study demonstrated that telephone outreach (8.21%) was more effective than follow-up emails (0.03%);
- The average sales development rep makes 52 calls daily to generate follow-ups.
Social Media
- Sales reps who are active on social media platforms get 45% more sales opportunities than those who are not;
- Social media is a more effective sales channel than traditional channels, with 51% more sales reps reaching their quota;
- 98% of sales reps with more than 5,000 connections on LinkedIn meet their targets or exceed them.
Multi-Channel Selling
- There is a 28% increase in MQL-to-SQL conversion rates among sales development reps who leverage three or more touch-points, compared to those who simply call or email;
- By sending follow-up emails to sales leads between phone contact attempts, you increase your chances of contacting them by 16%.
Sales Follow-Up Best Practices
The follow-up process is not always linear, and it does require some planning in the form of a follow-up schedule.
However, your sales team can generate new leads and move the sales process along with existing sales leads if the right tactics are in place.
Categorize Your Leads
First and foremost, categorizing leads is important and often overlooked in many ways.
Organizing your leads makes it easier for your team to coordinate a follow-up strategy.
Group your contacts based on their budget, buying authority, timeframe, and readiness to accept. Send follow-up messages that focus on their needs and their business and industry pressure points.
Besides tracking which page of your site caused a visitor to opt-in, you can also prequalify visitors by using a starting point system that assigns them a score based on the content they interact with on your site.
Attribute’s machine learning lead scoring model applies a score to each lead based on various criteria. In this way, a company can easily tell which leads are more likely to convert into appointments and sales.
Needless to say, these leads need to be given special attention and care to increase profit.
Respond In A Timely Fashion
Send an email or make a phone conversation within 12-24 hours after a lead comes in to thank them. Make sure you answer their questions so that you can demonstrate your concern and attention to them.
This part of the follow-up process is crucial and will determine your lead’s perception of your company and associated product or service.
Nurture Your Sales Leads With Useful Content
If you communicate with your audience members, you should always focus on adding value, no matter what stage of the funnel they’re in.
A great way to share valuable information is via blog posts, infographics, success stories, and downloadable guides. To convert a lead into a customer, you have to nurture the lead or warm them up.
However, do not concentrate solely on converting them into customers; instead, focus on their smaller steps, such as downloading the guide or visiting the blog.
Personalize Your Communication
It’s good practice to personalize your correspondence. This can include using the recipient’s name in your follow-up emails, sending them tailored information based on their visit to your website, or personally responding to an online inquiry instead of pushing canned responses.
Offer Multiple Follow-Up Channels
There is a preferred way that individual leads communicate, which you may not know at this point. Connect with potential clients through social media, email, and phone calls.
Just make sure that you are accessible, no matter how your lead prefers to communicate. Answer your phone and return calls promptly, and ensure you check your inbox regularly.
Create A Follow-Up Schedule
It typically takes 7-10 touches before a conversion occurs (i.e., re-engagement). Maintaining a follow-up schedule will ensure you stay consistent with your communication and prevent you from losing track of the leads you worked so hard to obtain.
Keep your leads informed but avoid annoying them with your communications. In addition, re-engagement of leads is an effective tool to help garner sales and lower your cost per acquisition (CPA) as some consumers just need enough time for their circumstances to change or their interest to arise.
Review Your Call Analytics
You’re way ahead of the game if you have a CRM (contact/customer relationship management) system. Using a CRM, you can keep a record of all outreach and communications with your customers. If you do not have a CRM, Excel will do just fine.
Regularly reviewing data will help you identify hot leads and allow you to see which leads during the sales calls to process.d
Conclusion
As we reach the end of this article, keep in mind that email marketing is a bit antiquated and is more about outreach rather than real nurturing or customer engagement.
That means that most prospects simply send emails to the trash because they are templated and cookie clutter.
On the other hand, text and calls are way more personalized and effective at nurturing a lead. Sure, email marketing is fine, but it should be accompanied by other types of marketing, like SMS texting, call, or social media.
The bottom line is that many companies do not utilize personalized texting, which is more effective than email outreach, as shown above, plus one of the most cost-effective direct communication channels.
At Attribute, we can help with your company’s direct communication channels, as we give our clients total control of their leads and the conversion process. Working to empower those we work with, you’ll get a 360 view of follow-ups plus the entire sales funnel, so you can make changes to your strategy where needed.
By seamlessly integrating capabilities and real-time data, you can utilize our range of communication tools to generate more sales leads.
If you’re ready to increase your response rates by offering effective AI and SMS follow-up, lead scoring, and automated workflows that make following up with customers effortless, choose Attribute.
Show prospects you’re there for them and that you can meet their unique needs. Use Attribute to keep the conversation with customers going as you automate your workflows, resulting in maximizing profit while reducing sales and marketing costs.
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