Making a sale takes work. Any successful salesperson will tell you it’s not easy, and you need to put in effort to get results. In an ideal world, your prospects would be ready to hand over their money on the first point of contact, allowing you to move on to the next, but in reality this is very uncommon.
According to IRC Sales Solutions, only around 2% of sales are made at the first point of contact, making it easy to see how much potential revenue is lost if you stop there. Even the second point of contact is not much more successful at around 3%, and the third is still only 5%. With around 90% of sales occurring after the first three points of contact, it’s clear that to successfully close sales you need to persevere.
Perseverance Is Key
The statistics above highlight just how important it is to persevere. Despite this, a surprising 44% of salespeople will not try again after the first call. An astonishing 92% will have given up by the fifth call.
What more salespeople need to understand is that a lot of people are not ready to buy at the first point of contact. However, this does not necessarily mean they won’t be delighted to buy at some point in the future. You just need to keep on going until they are ready.
Take any database and around 56% of the prospects in that database are nowhere near ready. Again, this does not mean they won’t be ready at some point in the future – they’re just not ready now. Around 40% are a lot closer to buying and probably just need more convincing, or perhaps their finances aren’t quite right at the moment.
This means that only around 3% are ready to buy at a given moment in time, but let’s not forget about the 40% who are close. Keep on working with them and they can be converted, and even some of the 56% will end up as customers if you continue to work with them.
Timing Is Important
You should also not wait too long before following up, because if you do, somebody else might get there before you. Indeed, around 30%-50% of sales will go to the vendor that is the first to follow up, and if you follow up within five minutes, you’re nine times more likely to convert prospects into customers. At that point try and set a time and date for the next call, and send a follow-up email as soon as your call has ended.
It’s also important to remember that your prospects need to be guided through the sales cycle. They are going to have objections, and overcoming these objections is necessary to get to the next stage. When you follow up, you get the opportunity to raise and overcome objections, and this will get you closer to closing the deal and gaining a new customer.
The infographic below illustrates how critical following-up is in turning prospects into buyers and how to integrate it with your sales process.
