By MARK RIFFEY for the Flathead Beacon Newspaper

How do you know when a lead is no longer interested in buying? How do you know when they are ready to buy? What signals do you detect that signal a buy is imminent or that the prospect has at least decided but isn’t ready to order?

Certainly we know when they’re ready if they provide a purchase order number, or request an invoice, but there should be additional signals as well. You and your sales staff can probably identify these, but are they collected and acted upon systematically?

As with service follow ups we’ve discussed in the last couple of weeks, we often fail to connect with “stale” or inactive leads because, we simply don’t think about it, or we have no system for doing so.

Often, sales follow ups occur only because we’re desperate to close a sale or because our quota period ends soon and we aren’t quite at our quota. While those triggers might be important to you, your sales prospect follow up system should also trigger follow ups based on points in the sales process that are important to your prospects.

Typically, the only way to detect such triggers is monitoring and recording information that provokes a decision to buy (or not) by a prospect. How do you currently do that? What signals can you think of that have historically told you that someone is ready to buy, or that they are ready to take the next step in the process that typically results in a sale?

Why and when to follow up with prospects

What if your sales follow ups were strategic and more purposeful than “quota approaching” or “desperate for cashflow”? If they were, you would have a timeline of follow ups for each lead (or each type of lead) for your products, or for each product, as you have time to fine tune the process.
For example, if you know that prospects typically take 32 days to decide on a purchase in your market, you would follow up in the days just approaching the 32 day timeframe.

If you determine that that there are other signals that indicate decision making and you can detect those in a follow up, why wouldn’t you do that follow up? As with the support and service follow up, the reason is usually the lack of a system.

Nine word emails?

One of the tactics in common use is the nine word email – though this tool can be used in emails, calls or text messages.
The email, call or text message doesn’t have to be exactly nine words, but the key is to keep things very succinct and free of baggage.

A nine word email looks like this:

“Carla,

Are you still looking for a fifth wheel camper?

Mark”

The point is to engage, and re-kindle a conversation. People are busy. They forget. A nine word email can take care of those tasks.

Following up in the sales department

Your job is to remind them so you can check and see if they’re ready to buy. If they aren’t, but they’re still interested, then you can include (or re-include) them in your sales follow up system in case they aren’t already there.
The task takes fine tuning and care. Your attempts to check in can be perceived as badgering (you’ve been there) or worse. Be sure that your attempts are well-timed, not too frequent and about their needs, not yours.

One frequent mistake I see is follow ups whose topic is the end of the month, end of the quarter or the end of a sales contest or quota period. While those things might be important to you – there’s not a single reason for your client to care about these things. Sure, prospects are sometimes aware that end of month and end of quarter timeframes often yield better deals, but if they’re at that point, you should already have signals that they’re about to buy. Make sure the follow up is about them, not you.

Learning and testing the timing of your sales follow up is critical. What timing is most critical when a follow up results in a sale? What are the next two or three critical points? What additional information do they need to decide to buy, even if they buy from someone else? After the sale, which follow up is most effective at preventing refunds?

Want to learn more about Mark or ask him to write about a strategic, operations or marketing problem? See Mark’s site, contact him on Twitter, or email him at mriffey@flatheadbeacon.com.