Follow-Up is NOT Good for Sales

Yes I say NOT! This article may be a challenge for many and cause others to spit on me at sales conferences but I firmly believe that I have a valid point. Join in if you agree or want me to see otherwise.

This article is NOT suggesting that you don't develop ongoing relationships with customers. I don't consider contacting an existing customer to be follow-up but working on a new sale - Follow-On Selling.

My point here is that the kind of follow up that most sales people are encouraged to engage in is not productive and actually damaging overall sales. There are more important things for them to be doing like surfing the Internet! Let me start at the beginning.

A Typical Sales Manager

Let me present the typical sales manager. He (yes he) is obsessed with looking good and being in control. His whole career is hinged on this month's KPI figures and if he can't get his 'boys' to deliver then he is looking for a new job. This fellow talks about there being no "I" in team (there isn't a Benedict last time I looked either) and uses his charges as though they were an extension of himself.

To him everything is in the "conversion" and the closer he can get to a 100% score the better he feels. Every prospect must be handled and managed to the nth degree - he believes that anything that isn't micro-managed will fail. At the end of every day the salesmen have to file into his office and report on their day's activities. How many new prospects? How many closed? Who did you follow up: 1 day, 1 week, 1 month, 6 months...?

Buying Window

As many of you know I worked in cars for many years and what we all knew was that in most cases the Buying Window looks a lot like this:

Buying Window - time when the customer is most likely to buy

This is based on my experience with cars. Buying houses will generally have a longer time curve and buying margarine will be shorter but the shape is fundamentally the same for all purchases.

Research - In the research phase which is generally only a few days the chance of getting a sale is very low. People will not buy before they are ready. See the 3 Steps in Buying
Buying Window - Once the average buyer hits the showrooms on Day 4 then they are very likely to purchase a car in 3-4 hours! After 24 hours the sales window is firmly falling closed
Aftermath - By about a week the chance of getting a sale from the average buyer is down in the noise*

Diamonds & Rust**

As you can see the salesman really only has opportunity for 24 hours and then he is over and out - useless as... well you know what I mean. Understandable then that conventional sales wisdom has been to push for a 100% conversion rate but that is not productive as it raises the pressure on the salesman and in turn the customer. This is the "earn 'em or burn 'em" mentality. It seems to make sense but it ensures that anyone who didn't buy is now an enemy of the business now and forever. Clever plan.

The sales team is then forced to focus on the Aftermath, attempting to pull diamonds from the rust. This is a losing proposition and worse than a waste of time. People buy in the window and your salesman has had his shot (assuming a good one), those people are gone. They know about the business, they know about the product and they know all they care to about the price. They know you are there. If they are interested they will be back.

The very essence of the "earn 'em or burn 'em" ethos is that you get "one shot" and after that it is a waste. So why do "old school" sales managers keep chasing the setting sun? There is no value there. If you chase people then you are putting yourself on the back foot. The salesman is likely to get rejection of the nastiest sort. Non-customers will sadly take the opportunity to make him feel inadequate that he failed. The sales manager will then chime in to rub salt in those wounds. This salesman is now truly "head-nicked" and not positive, cheery and on his game for the next person who walks in at the start of their buying window.

Sure you can say the salesman should not be so sensitive - "Harden the f@#% up" as Chopper Read said so eloquently - but in my experience the best natural salesmen are people of sensitivity. They understand and empathize with people. It makes no sense to erode the very traits that make a great salesman by making him not only waste his time but get kicked in the teeth for it. The thick-skinned are agressive so they look like "killers" but in reality they aren't the salesmen of the future where Trust is a major factor in the customer-heavy balance of power.

Chase the Future

Seeing the past is unrecoverable then there is no point chasing it. Chasing is a low ROI task anyway which makes the salesman weak, the business weak, the product weak. Do something different and chase the future instead. The graph makes it very clear that you need to put your emphasis on the first two phases so put your resources there.

The sun will rise again and there will be more diamonds (to mix some metaphors). The sales team are better occupied in productive activities - improving product knowledge, improving empathy skills, improving team happiness and cohesion, and here is an interesting one:

get your salesmen involved in the Research phase.

No that does not mean, hit the phone books to cold call, but to work your salesmen into where people are doing their research. If your salesmen can help people see that your product, company and staff are a good fit for their needs they are far more likely to short-list your showroom for a visit (when your salesman get their shot face-to-face). Get your sales team involved in future sales by implementing things like having salesmen:

chat with marketing
chat with product developers
chat with service and support
involved in Blogs, Forums and other Social Media where people (customers) are discussing your product or industry

Now I hear a lot of "we can't do that" and "no one would be happy" but if you can get people sharing ideas then:

marketing can hear straight from the tarmac on issues and get the salesmen onside personally for their campaigns
developers get feature requests from the coal face and salesmen can clearly explain to customers why gold steering wheels are a bad idea (too slippery and melt all over the leather trim)
service and support get to show sales their needs and vica verca
your staff get to see trends and also be product advocates, if well done people are also delighted to get an "insider's" view right there in a forum or blog

El Dorado is Real

You may say, "That is very nice Benedict but it will never happen". Sure, I understand but guess what, I learned all of this from a place I used to work! My job was to sell first and foremost but when I didn't have customers I was free to pursue whatever I saw fit to improve my position and that of the business. I could take a product home if I wanted more intimate time with it. I knew what the service department were struggling with and would sometimes even step in to help out. I read far and wide on the company and what customers thought of the products. Never a week went by without the web site being worked on. My boss never asked me what I was doing as I was proud to show him. I called prospects and customers if I felt that it was productive (and only then).

In that time we were the #1 franchise for volume nationally for every brand we carried, we had a very high ratio of good customers, I was #1 salesman in the country with great grosses and get this - it was common for people to come out of the noise in the Aftermath and buy on the spot for up to a year after we had looked at each other through that window. All of this because we let the past lie and focused on making the present and the future what we wanted it to be.

When I got a sales manager like the one described above my sales and grosses fell to average or below. I moved on.

El Dorado is real, you just need to build it with your staff.

* Statistics generally says that variances under 5% are too unreliable to be considered a trend. This makes that area noise.

** Diamonds & Rust is a Joan Baez song that I know from Judas Priest's 1977 album "Sin After Sin"