Follow-up Sucess Story

A winning story about follow-up;

Back in the mid-nineties I was selling to a billion dollar corporation that had 300+ branches around the country. This company had every possible item in its' cart to sell but frequently was not well respected by customers or competitors. Lack of product knowledge bothered the customers and selling on price bothered the competitors.

I happened to be in a district managers' office towards the end of their fiscal year. He was extremely pleased because his territory had increased their sales significantly. Upon asking what the secret was for his teams' success he admitted it was almost all follow-up. It seems the previous year they only followed up on about 25% of their quotations. The hit rate was the industry standard of 20ish % . However, during that current year a new policy was instituted that all quotes over X$ would be followed up. The success rate moved to a phenominal 38% !

Follow-up is a winning habit. Do it in all points of the sales cycle not just after a quote is issued. But make a concentrated effort to follow up anything that has the $ sign.