The Follow-Up to the Follow-Up!

I know this seems like a silly title but think about it. We have discussed the importance of following up in the past but amazingly, most still don’t follow up! In this post, we are going to discuss “The Follow-Up to the Follow Up!”

When you do a marketing campaign you are trying to build your business, get leads, increase awareness, etc. Unfortunately, studies show that 87% of all leads are never followed up on – 87%! This is really sad and a huge waste of money and effort.

We also know that most sales are made after the 5^th attempt, yet 48% of all salespeople quit after the first sales call – seriously?! Why do all the work, why put in all of the effort, why spend all of the money that it takes to get to the point of meeting with someone if all you are going to do is walk away?

Before you start thinking you have had enough of getting spanked for your situation, there is good news. In fact, if you are paying attention (and I hope you are since you paid for all those leads, the least you can do now is pay attention), there is great news!

If nearly half of all salespeople quit after the first attempt, half of your competition have disqualified themselves without you having to do anything, this is great news!

Think about how knowing this will change the way you do business. Think about how you can now adjust your approach because now you know you are moving up the list to be considered just because you showed up.

I think I read somewhere that Woody Allen once said that success is 80% showing up or something like that. I don’t know if he said it or who did and I also don’t know if it is true but I do know with 100% accuracy that if you do not show up you will never win with any consistency. Let me give you a real life example that happened to me:

Many years ago I was running a tech company and we were asked to bid on a particular job for a company that was based in Europe and was expanding in the U.S. The bid package went out to 260 companies in the U.S. that did what we did. The list was eventually whittled down to about 23 companies of which we were one.

This prospect eventually got it down to just three (3) companies and we made the cut again. Now we were told that in order to be considered, all three (3) companies had to fly to Europe at their own expense and meet with the company that was expanding in order to make our best and final presentation. So we went through all that was necessary, set up the trip and off we go with no guarantee of success.

Once we arrived, we got settled in and set up our meeting to make our presentation and we did the best we could hoping to win. Once we completed our mission we flew home and had to wait to see if the investment of time, money, resources, etc. would be worth it.

I am happy to say that we were chosen to win the contract and that started a very lucrative business relationship that lasted for years and grew nearly every day.

Guess what? We found out later that we were the only company to show up! Even though the European company reached out again to the others, no one would show up. We won because we had the best solution, the best prices and we were committed to our customers but…..

We simply showed up!

Make sure that you follow up the follow-up! Never quit, don’t give in. Readjust where you need to but remember to have a plan for “The Follow-Up to the Follow-Up!”

If you would like help with this or any other business, sales, marketing, social media issues and more, contact us at:

Until our next post – we wish you all success!