Follow Up with Your Customers

Closing a Sale requires you to do one thing, that many sales people over look… following up. All too often sales professionals will go through their pitch with a customer, and if they do not buy, then they will move on, never once thinking about following up, and so that pitch is wasted. Closing a sale are equal parts contact, pitch, and following up. Three reasons you should follow up with your prospect are:

1) Follow up with your client to close a sale. It shocks me how often my sales people do not follow up on open quotes; they are waiting for the customer to call back to them. After your initial meeting with the buyer and you did not complete a sale, than it means you have to follow up with them, and probably more than once. It take on average 7 follow ups to close the sale…how many do you do? You can also tell the customer know about other products or services that might interest him. See if the customer has any more questions since he has time to digest the initial conversation.

2) Follow up with your customer after the sale. This discussion is more to make the customer feel celebrated like  he is the only customer you have. By following up it shows you committed to doing more business with them in the future. The customer will respect you calling them letting them know the product has shipped and that you are in tune with his needs.

3) Follow up with your customer after he has received the product. This is probably one of the most significant reasons to follow up. That is to see how the product is doing and if they are happy with it. This shows that you care about the customer’s needs and not just in making sales. You can also gain considerable feedback in this action by asking about his experience. Learn if there is anything you can do differently for future customer contacts. If customers are not happy with the product, be empathetic and try and resolve any problems that you can.

Closing a sale is a long process sometimes and following up is key to building relationships and positive name for yourself. The more contact you have with customers the strong a relationship you can build and the easier closing sales becomes. Do not try and cheat the process by not following up with customers because in the end your only cheating yourself out of future commission checks.