Closing The Thread: What Is Your Follow Up Rhythm?

You’ve created a beautiful digital marketing experience.

You’ve fine-tuned your branding and website, content is adding value to your niche and you’ve hit the ground running across search and social.

Your audience is growing – word is spreading and perfectly aligned leads are coming through and estimates or proposals are flowing in nicely.

There’s only one problem.

Sales aren’t going up or are plateaued.

The path from initial inquiry to qualification to estimation is flawless — so what’s the issue?

Working with many small businesses from across different industries over the years, one of the recurring issues I’ve observed happens in the final few steps of a deal – a shaky or non-existent follow up system.

Even in markets where everything is perfectly fine-tuned and deals close quickly (and efficiently) – the follow up system is often one of the most glaring – and fixable – weak spots.

If you’re finding yourself in the situation above, where things might be plateauing here are some notes for you to review to help open your eyes a bit on where those deals might be slipping through the cracks.

You’re Not Bothering – You’re Helping Them Remember

“I’m afraid of bothering people.”

No one likes a pushy/aggressive sales process — most are sloppy, random and ultimately can cause a deal to derail (we’ve all run into those folks before) and following up can sometimes feel like this.

Step back and look at the situation, however: when leads are coming to you and they’ve reached the estimation/proposal phase, there’s already an open, transparent dialogue there – they’ve requested your help with a particular situation and are exploring options for solutions.

After the estimation/proposal goes out, it’s up to you to make sure they received it (first) – and to be present/available should they have any questions.

In many cases, life can sometimes get in the way of those leads you’re working with; people get busy with other things, priorities shift and all of a sudden the proposals and estimates they requested become secondary to what’s immediately in front of them at the time.

It happens to everyone, really – so following up, in many cases, can allow them to remember where you left off in case the project has drifted down on their to-do list.

Establish A (Reasonable) Follow Up Rhythm

Creating a cadence – or rhythm – can help your follow up process stay more consistent.

This is likely the most delicate part – creating a rhythm that isn’t overwhelming your leads with communication, but also being frequent enough so you don’t lose sight of them (or allow others to slip in at the finish line).

This is something that can be modified for your particular small business, but here’s an example rhythm/template:

Estimate/Proposal Sent
Same Day: Estimate/Proposal Received Confirmation
1 Week Later: Follow Up
2 Weeks Later: Follow Up
1 Month Later: Follow Up
3 Months Later: Follow Up

Of course, you can break this rhythm up at anytime if you establish a win or different timeline, but the idea is simple: create a rhythm that is repeatable and adjust based on data/effectiveness.

Win Or Lose – You’ll Have More Data Either Way

You don’t know if you don’t ask.

If you simply spin out estimates without ever following up, you’re missing vital (sometimes critical) data that you can use to improve your marketing.

Are you missing deals because of price? Service fit? Competitor? Something else?

You might be able to infer some things without a follow up, but getting a first-hand account of why some deals push through – and (more importantly) why they aren’t – will allow you to make adjustments to correct or reinforce for not only your future estimates, but also your digital marketing.

I talk about metrics often here, and understanding the why behind deals (won or lost) is something almost every small business must track.

Stop Losing At The Finish Line (Don’t Let Your Digital Marketing Investment Go To Waste)

Putting a ton of time, energy and effort into your digital marketing only to let deals slip through right before the finish line – by not refining your follow up system – can feel heartbreaking.

Not only will this cause your sales to slump, it will put undue pressure on you to scrape out more leads to make up for the ones that you lost/leaked in your sales process.

More leads won’t fix a leaky sales process – it will only increase the flow of the leaks.

So I’ll leave you with this question: after your estimates/proposals leave your desk – what is your follow up system for pushing those through the finish line (or learning why they may be lost)?