follow up right and you may not need any new leads.
by jassen bowman
to put it bluntly, if you’re not actively marketing to your lead database on a regular basis, then you wasted the money you spent to obtain those leads in the first place.
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one amazing fact about sales has held true for nearly a century: the majority of sales are closed after the fifth contact. this fact holds true for any industry, and the number of contacts required to close a sale increases as the price point of the product or service increases.
what does this mean for your lead database? it means that you should have an automated, pre-set followup sequence that your lead and prospects get entered into. this followup sequence should last for an absolute minimum of three months, although six months to a year is ideal.
you should also have unique followup campaigns for leads and prospects, in order to move them along to the next step. remember, lists become leads become prospects become clients.
who gets assigned to this followup campaign? you should have people tagged in your database as a lead or prospect. example sub-tags:
- has personally met with you
- has been given a telephone consultation
- has requested information, such as a special report, from you
- has visited your website or called you
anybody who has expressed interest in your services should be included in a followup program appropriate to their level of interest. if you have to prioritize because of budget, your existing clients and best prospects should receive highest followup priority.
if a lead has requested information from you via the web, you should always at least request their email address and add them to an email autoresponder sequence that reaches out to them at least weekly.
for prospects to whom you have given a consultation and/or sent proposals, you will obviously have their mailing address. in this case, you should be mailing something to them each and every week. yes, direct mail each and every week for a predetermined length of time. what you send them can be a variety of things:
- monthly tax newsletter
- webinar invitations
- live financial seminar invitations
- reports and information
- quick tax savings tips
in addition, it’s a good idea to have an organized telephone followup campaign. especially after you do a consultation and give them a proposal, you should be following up with them every day for a week, and then at least weekly thereafter for a month, then at least monthly.
the sequence of emails, phone calls, direct mail offers, newsletters, seminars and other activities that you engage in as follow up with your prospects should all be preplanned, pre-prepared and automated to the greatest extent possible. your followup activities should not be something you have to think about. with today’s computer technology, there is no reason to do this work manually, where it often gets overlooked.
following up with your active prospects is, quite frankly, the single most important marketing activity that you can engage in. many firms with a substantial prospect database could actually stop their lead generation activities and focus solely on proper followup with existing prospects. with a 10 to 20 percent conversion rate within just this prospect database, this followup campaign can provide sufficient revenue to grow your firm with no additional new lead generation.