Why “just following up” may cost you sales
Posted by Geoff Alexander on Thu, Oct 23, 2008 @ 02:53 AM
One of the most important elements in a successful sales call is having a clear, focused objective for the call. An example of an ineffective objective is "I'm just following up" on some event that occurred in the past, whether it's a previous conversation, a past-due service contract, or a call that a rep is placing to attempt to get more add-on business (known as upselling or cross-selling.) If "following up" is your objective, that's probably the verbiage you'd use to begin your call. A better objective is that you're calling to get a PO, to set up a meeting, or to get a current customer to standardize on your solution throughout the enterprise, to name a few. That way, you can begin your call by stating a powerful reason for your call. Let me give you an example, right from one of my coaching sessions.
Sean was a very smart junior sales rep, recently graduated from college, and his company sold sophisticated engineering software heavily used in the defense and avionics industries. His task was to call customer end-users to see if they needed any further licenses. His company thought this was a good way to get his feet wet before advancing to calling new prospects. Initially, he told me that he'd call individual engineers, tell them he was "following up," and ask if they needed anything else. Instead, we had a conversation about engineering in general, and discussed VPs of Engineering, and the reasons they preferred to standardize on engineering solutions, so that all of their engineers would be using common technology. So we decided that instead of calling individual engineers, we'd call the VP of Engineering for a Very Large Avionics company. And we'd call with the objective of standardization.
When he dialed, he got the executive admin for the VP of Engineering, introduced himself, and asked to speak to the VP about standardizing on his solution. The admin replied "He's in a meeting, I'll see if I can break him out of it." Sean was really sweating, because he realized that he was interrupting an important person's busy day, but we'd rehearsed what he was going to say, so he hung in there. The VP came to the phone, and Sean stated his case. He said the company was already a customer, and he wanted all of their engineers to use his solution. There was a brief pause, and the VP said "Well, we like your product, and we should probably be moving down that path. Tell me what we have to do to get started." And Sean was off to the races with the most successful call in his young career.
Notice that Sean didn't start his call with "Is this a good (or bad) time to talk?," "How are you today?," or "I'm just following up." Instead, he was professional, consultative, and stated his clear objective as the reason for his call in his opening. And he got exactly what he wanted. We teach this in our sales training classes as an important way to increase sales, but you can do it too from your own desk, right now. Always have a clear, sales-oriented objective for each call based on what you'd like to achieve as an outcome, begin your call by stating it, and add this sales technique to your Best Practices playbook.