How to implement effective follow-up strategies

Once you’ve put in effort with a prospect, you need to develop a successful follow-up strategy to make those efforts worth it. Business is a fast-paced field with quick turn-around and an ever-changing clientele. In order to remain relevant, you need to provide valuable follow-up with customers to increase conversions. Your reputation and your potential for profit are hingent on how well you can follow-up with your prospects.

But what is the best way to follow-up with your potential clients? You want to strike a balance between consistency and valuable communication. While we all know what you should avoid when following up, what are the things you should incorporate more into your technique to improve your strategy?

We’ve outlined 7 important steps for creating a follow-up strategy that is sure to boost your sales and improve you relationships with customers.

Remember to be respectful

Any customer, whether a returning one or a potential one, deserves to be treated with respect. It’s important to build genuine relationships with your customers to build trust. 

Customers will be deterred from your services if you are constantly bombording them with messages, being curt and even harassing them. There is a line between being persistent and being annoying. Never belittling or demean customers. Treat each and every customer with kindness and respect their decision whether they go with your service or not.

Consistency is key

An effective follow-up strategy is made up of consistency. You simply can’t rely on sending one follow-up message and expect to convert potential clients. It also is beneficial to create a follow-up schedule to make sure you stay on track with your follow-ups and provide a level of consistency that is neither overwhelming, nor too little. 

The key to consistency is remaining unpredictable. Don’t rely on a handful of follow-up replies to find success. If you’ve been successful in the past with a certain follow-up approach, you can definitely keep this template in your arsenal. However, changing things up and becoming unpredictable can help you win sales. 

If you can surprise your customers, add a personal touch or reach out in a unique way, potential clients will be impressed and more likely to choose you in the end. So be sure to create a follow-up schedule so no client slips through the cracks, while ensuring that you change things up from time to time to avoid becoming a nuisance. 

Vary your contact methods

Using a variety of follow-up methods can also help you remain unpredictable. If you’ve already sent several follow-up emails to your prospect without reply, they likely won’t respond to the next one.

Staying relevant and top of mind is vital when standing out from the competition. If you can maintain attention from your prospects, you’re more like to gain new customers. Email is not the only way to connect with clients. 

Since people spend a significant amount of time on their phones and social media, it can be beneficial to send a text or make a phone call as an alternative to an email. You can even use snail mail or send out tweets on Twitter or post on Facebook to reach potential customers. 

Analyze your results

With email, you can track whether they’ve been opened as well as track the click-through rate. This information can help you improve your follow-up tactics. It’s been shown that the subject line of an email can make or break its success. Having a well-written and catchy subject line can lead to higher click-through rates.

Keep track of the level of response from your various follow-up methods. Every business has different clientele and varying audiences. For some, email may be the most effective method of reaching out. For others, text messages may prove more beneficial. Ultimately, you should keep track of your response rates from each method to see which one works best for you.

Provide more value

Following up with prospects can cause them stress if it’s only a pestering reminder. Acknowledge that your potential clients have busy schedules just like you. Sometimes, a follow-up doesn’t even require a response. So instead of simply sending out a reminder that will often be read and forgotten within minutes, add more value to your follow-ups. 

Using content marketing provides customers with other information or products to consider, helping you to provide more value and potential increase your business.

Make sure the content you share is relevant for the potential client and also avoid trying to hard sell in every follow-up. Adding more content to your follow-ups should rather promote further conversation or peak interest. 

Quick and concise

Along with adding more value to your follow-up messages, you should ensure that you reach out to prospects quickly and concisely. No potential client wants to read a page-long follow-up. You should provide them with a valuable message in a clear, straight-to-the-point manner. 

Along with being straight-forward, you should follow-up with potential customers in a timely manner. Don’t wait for long periods out of fear of being annoying. Rather, be confident in your skills and provide a swift follow-up so you stay fresh in their minds. 

Provide ample time 

Avoid setting your clients under pressure. Sending out frequent pressing reminders can cause prospetop of cts stress. You want to remain friendly and strike a balance between staying on your follow-ups without overwhelming them and going overboard with messages.

Don’t expect immediate results. Some clients will take longer than others to respond or make a decision to go with your services. Understand your client base and respect boundaries. You should also realize that some prospects will never convert to customers. Even if you’ve tried all of the effective techniques above, you won’t be successful every time. 

Know when to stop following-up. If you can see that the potential client is not responding or becoming annoyed with your efforts, stop following-up. It’s more beneficial in the long-run to maintain a friendly relationship with clientele than to burn bridges by being overbearing.