Now, before we look at how we should follow up, we’ve done some analysis on how the follow-up impacts your success rate.

First we found out: “When do customers buy?”. 1^st contact? No, and not the second either. One out of ten buy here, and another one here. It turns out that 80% of customers buy after 5 contacts or more.

Next question: “When do sellers give up?”. 1^st contact? Yes, 5 out of 10 give up here. 2^nd contact? 3 more disappear, and one more after the 3^rd contact. Anyone left? Yes! One brave salesperson will stay until the customer is ready to buy. Let’s agree that this person should come from NCAB, OK?

Now, it’s quite surprising to find out only 10% of salespeople call potential new customers more than 3 times. Now, if we remember back to our warm calling values, the soft sell is a best sell. Through the validation process, we know any potential customers that we’re targeting are valuable to NCAB, which means that we should be persevering, even when we come up against resistance. And this is because we’ve already identified a need and can offer them a solution.

So, for a salesperson not to follow up more than 3 times is criminal. We’ve already identified that we can help this customer, we already know that will make a huge difference to our orderbook and our business, so why would we not follow up more than three times? This is a difference between someone that is successful on a warm call and someone that isn’t.

Now, the reason we’ve done so much validation and ensuring that we are warm calling is to give you as an individual the motivation to persevere. You know this is a potential opportunity that will change your order book, so I recommend that you continue with these customers until you understand or believe there is no opportunity for NCAB.

The final message from me is that it’s never crowded along the extra mile. By persevering with customers when you’ve identified a need and can offer a solution shows willingness to build the relationship with them. By keeping in regular contact, it demonstrates that we understand their requirements and truly believe we can help them.

Moving forward, think about customers, and actually about the possibility the next call could be the one that makes a difference.