Follow Up to Maximize Appointment Setting | Telemarketing

This experience prompts me to recall again how important it is to mix in with your new calls a steady diet of follow up and relationship building calls. I believe that the familiarity bred from repeated contacts and conversations is what drives new business development. But, of course, it all starts with the first calls.

WIN THE WAR. The National Sales Executive Association has conducted a survey on how many sales you can get depending on how many times you contact your prospects. Their statistics show that most sales are made from the 5th contact through the 12th contact. Here is the data they have compiled about on which prospect contact the sale is made.

Cumulative:
2% of sales are made on the 1st contact 2%
3% of sales are made on the 2nd contact 5%
5% of sales are made on the 3rd contact 10%
10% of sales are made on the 4th contact 20%
80% of sales are made on the 5th-12th contact 100%

With these statistics in mind, structure the mix of your calls to maximize success. The first calls require 50 attempts to succeed while fourth contact calls require only 10 attempts to succeed. Follow-through drives results.

CALL ACCOUNTS RECEIVABLE OR PAYROLL. Employees in these departments are taught to answer telephones and return messages. Customer service is important to their job function. They will talk with anyone. Ask some questions and get a lot of useful information before asking to transfer to another extension.

E-MAIL A FOLLOW-THROUGH. An e-mail follow-through to your listener greatly increases the chance of a return call. I encourage you to turn on the return receipt requested feature in your e-mail software. Knowing that the listener opened your e-mail is very valuable when making the next telephone call. The subject line should reference the voice mail and have a date stamp: "Follow-through on Tuesday's voice mail."

CALL YOURSELF. Most people do not like to hear themselves on tape. The reason is because few people are polished speakers. Voice mail is the simplest version of public speaking. A poor voice mail on the initial contact leaves the other person with a negative impression. Practice, practice and more practice are the keys to a professional voice mail presentation. Experiment with different messages and techniques on yourself before you try them on others. Listen to yourself honestly and make needed changes. Ask yourself one question, "would I return this voice mail?" experimenting until the answer is "yes".

THE BIG $$ HABIT. High producers will block out dialing time to leave voice mails. Review the "win the war" statistics above. What would happen if you left 100 third or fourth contact voice mails while working during off-hours? Nothing bad except filling your schedule with revenue opportunities. This block dialing time is planned with the goal being approximately 30 messages left per hour. The big money is made by closing transactions during normal business hours. You need to plan your dialing so that you are available to receive calls during prime business hours.

Mark Sanford, of Sanford Associates, is a business development coach and trainer with 30+ years of business experience. More free articles and training materials on cold calling. Mark can be reached at 925.253.0646.