To take your lead generation campaign to the next level, you need to start following up with your prospects in an effective and timely manner. This doesn’t mean sending them email after email in the hopes of garnering a response from them; there are better ways to go about it than that! Here are five reasons why follow-up is essential to successful lead generation.
1) Follow-Up Gets Leads
There’s a reason we start with following up. It gets people in your pipeline and allows you to build relationships that are necessary for successful lead generation. Follow-Up Keeps Leads: Although it can be easy to call or email once, multiple times is harder. So, what’s worse than a not responding prospect? A not responding prospect who never hears from you again because they forgot about you or were too busy (and aren’t interested).
Multiple touches reinforce your brand and keep your prospects top of mind before they need your product or service, which means… Follow-Up Keeps Opportunities Alive: Since follow-up keeps prospects top of mind, there’s less chance that they forget about you completely. This means when they do finally reach out, their interest is still alive—which makes them more likely to buy. Follow-Up Gets More Qualified Leads: If you want better leads, you have to talk to more people.
And if you want more qualified leads, then those people have to be at least somewhat interested in what you have to offer. The best way to find out if someone has an interest in buying from you is by having conversations with them—even if it doesn’t end up being a sale.
2) Follow-Up Shows Confidence
If a potential customer expresses interest in your product or service, sending a follow-up email shows that you are confident enough in your product that you want to ensure they don’t forget about it. Potential customers will appreciate how much effort you’re putting into making sure they make an informed decision. And with email marketing being so affordable and easy, there’s no reason not to take advantage of it.
A well-timed follow up message can keep them thinking about your product until they’re ready to purchase. They’ll feel as though you really care about their needs, which means they might be more likely to buy from you. This makes sense when we consider what customer loyalty really means: It’s simply giving your customers reasons to come back for more over time. Follow-Up Shows You Care: There is nothing worse than receiving an email that has nothing but pure sales pitch behind it. It may seem like such emails get results at first glance because people are responding by buying right away.
3) Follow-Up Cuts Down on Churn
Churn is essentially what happens when a company loses an existing customer. Whether that’s because they stopped making purchases or they simply weren’t happy with your product, churn can severely limit your future success. So, how do you cut down on churn? One way is by following up with customers who have left without a purchase for some time. By doing so, you may be able to rekindle their interest in your product and help them see its value again. Then again, some customers may have already moved on and may not ever make another purchase;
In those cases, at least you tried! It also helps to focus on specific aspects of your business that can impact churn. For example, did they leave due to quality issues? Did they leave due to a pricing issue? These are all questions you should ask yourself before reaching out and could potentially determine which methods of follow-up are most effective.
4) Follow-Up Is Cheap
If you’re trying to understand how you can get more business in, one of your most powerful tools may be time. Reaching out again and again makes a huge difference, especially if you change up your pitch with each interaction. If someone doesn’t buy after one interaction, there’s no reason for them not to come back for round two or three. It costs nothing but your time and showing up repeatedly can often pay off in new business.
Set aside 30 minutes every day just sending email reminders or following up on social media with people who’ve interacted with you recently—and keep them coming until they bite. Following up even occasionally may help you land an account that seemed out of reach initially! And don’t forget about LinkedIn as well; send out connection requests regularly and make sure to check back once a month or so. Your potential clients are online, so it’s important to maintain contact with them regularly. Even without hard sales pitches, being present could build valuable relationships over time.
5) Follow-Up Is Fast
With ever changing schedules and distractions, people are constantly inundated with information. This means that they don’t always have time to read your emails or watch your video pitches. In fact, many of your leads may not be ready or willing to engage right away. Sometimes it can take weeks or months for them to respond back.
Don’t let them slip through your fingers! Keep in touch through a series of well-crafted follow up emails and phone calls. While you may get turned down at first, don’t give up until you’ve made contact at least once per week for three consecutive weeks—at least according to HubSpot’s research . You never know how far persistence can take you when it comes to successful lead generation strategies!
Conclusion
The bottom line is that you can’t succeed in sales if you don’t get prospects to pay attention. The good news, though, is that with a bit of planning and strategy you can do just that. By applying what we’ve discussed here, your business will be on its way to much more efficient and successful lead generation. If there’s one thing we want you to take away from all of this, it’s make sure your prospect knows they have been heard—and valued—from start to finish by following up regularly and methodically.