Mastering Follow-Up: Effective Techniques to Engage Prospects Without Overwhelming Them (Full Transcript)

Speaker 1: So, you've sent your quote to your prospects and the big question is then, how do you follow up? When do you follow up? Should you follow up? So, what's the ultimate follow-up technique? One, if you're too eager, then of course it's always bad because you're in a bad negotiation spot. The other will find it and they will think, hmm, maybe I can push a bit more. So, here is some of the advice that I give. One is, I will always follow up, but on purpose after two to three days, preferably after three days because I'm not too eager and two, it means it looks like I have lots of business and I'm just saying, hey, I was thinking of you, I didn't hear you, and the sentence, hey, I was thinking of you, always works, I didn't hear anything of you, where are we on the process, where are you on your process, did you have time to review my offer, I don't really like that sentence, I rather try always to put in something a little bit different, a little bit more stronger than that. So, your timing, three days. What if they don't answer? Nothing. Well, I won't be doing it again in three days because the human mind doesn't work in that sequential way. We actually are asynchronous, so what I'll do is I'll probably do it after five or six days, right? I'll try and enlarge the time and then the third time, right? If you're in the US, they'll probably tell you six to seven times, you got to follow up. If you do that in many places in Europe, people get very nervous of you and they'll push you away. So, I'm somewhere in the middle. I think you should follow up three, four times for sure and I'll keep on following up until they almost say no, there is no option, but I'm nice and I will always stretch the time sitting in between there. Two, if there is no reaction, one of the things I'll do is I'll start crossing media. So, instead of just doing email or doing phone calls, I'll jump, I'll try social media, a LinkedIn message or actually if I have their phone number, WhatsApp works really well. I'll send them a text message. So, I'll try to go cross media. Don't overdo it. Don't hunt them down. People don't like that, but just try one or two jumps. I had very big success doing that because a lot of people when they're in a meeting, they can have a quick answer. If the door is still shut and it stays shut, it also means something that you're not relevant or they're actually scared of talking to you. If you would actually go and face them, they might actually again get scared back out, push you away. You don't want that. You want to be there for them. The moment they can decide, sometimes it's not in their control, right? And the last part, if nothing happens, I will play a technique, it's called the be guilty technique is I will give something of value and I won't sell. Hang on. So, I'll send them a text message or WhatsApp, a picture of somebody I met or I'll give them a screenshot of something or I was on an event or conference and I'll send them that. And I said, hey, I saw this, was thinking of you. How is the business going? That's it. I'm done. No closing. Extremely important. How many can you do like that? Well, I always have a list of six, seven people in my mind that I'm convinced they need me, of course, and I'll kind of keep going. You know what's funny? They rarely buy from me, but they become my biggest ambassadors because I keep giving them something they want that actually inspires or even educates them. And I see the same when people do that with me, it really, really works. So here are three rather simple tricks. If you would go on the YouTube channel, you subscribe, of course, you will find many, many, many more to improve your sales skills and your techniques.