I was having a conversation last week with my client and friend up north (Canada, not Kentucky!), Stephan Sigaud with Phase 5. We were talking about his smart use of a CRM platform and effective communication with buyers.
During the conversation, he used the phrase, “Nobody gets forgotten!” I lit up! That’s the perfect way to describe how you should stay in touch with clients and prospects. And Stephan makes it easy on himself. Here’s how…
He keeps his CRM open on his computer. As soon as he completes a call or sends an email to a buyer or prospective buyer, he goes into his CRM and schedules the date/time for a follow-up action. That’s it. It takes less than a minute. And nobody gets forgotten! And whether that follow-up is to send an email, schedule a call or get together for coffee… because it’s in his CRM, he knows it will happen.
For Both Clients and Prospects
- For staying-in-touch between projects with existing clients. Many clients are lost because we get busy between a client’s projects working on other clients’ projects… and forget to check in occasionally. And when we aren’t talking with them, you can bet your competitors are. Scheduling a series of client ‘check-in calls’ in your CRM ensures that that won’t happen to you.
- For keeping the sales process keeps moving. The buying-selling process has a lot of stages – following up on new leads, initial meetings/discovery calls, responding to requests for resources, more in-depth calls, capabilities presentations, responding to RFPs, etc. And the key to selling success is to make sure you’re continuously moving the buyer through the steps of the process. But all too often, we get busy. We get distracted. So, we’re late responding to a buyer. Or we completely forget. Want to know how to ruin a sales opportunity? Drop the ball when a potential buyer has asks you for something… and you forget to send it to them!
So, Why Don’t We Do It?
If it’s so easy and so effective, why don’t we all do it? All the time? One of my favorite phrases in business – and in life – is, “Things that are easy to do are also easy not to do.” And I think that’s a big part of it. In our mind, we’re saying to ourselves, “I don’t need to write this down – I’ll remember to do it.” Bad idea.
Maybe you don’t have a CRM? No problem. You can do the same thing in your Outlook or Google calendars. Or paper calendars. You can even do it with ‘yellow stickies’ all over your wall. The key is to make it a habit. As any call or activity wraps up… as each step in the sales process is checked off… as every opportunity to communicate with a buyer occurs, write down what needs to happen next and give it a deadline. That’s it. The key is to not let anything fall through the cracks.
And when nobody gets forgotten, you’ll find yourself with less client turnover and more sales prospects getting to the finish line.
Stephan Sigaud, Phase 5
Good luck and good selling… and thanks for the inspiration for this article, Stephan.