One of the single biggest mistakes people make in sales is not following up at all or not following up enough.
Over the years I’ve personally sold over $890 million worth of products and services.
I can only think of a few times out of over 290 projects that I sold to clients where they bought on the first presentation. In almost all cases it took quite a few followups to close a sale.
To drive home this point I was attending a marketing conference several years ago. The conference had about 400 people attending pay around $5,000 per person.
The speaker asked all the attendees to stand.
He then asked how many people responded to his first email. A few raised their hands and he asked them to sit down.
He then asked how many people responded to his second email. A few more people sat down.
This went on until he asked about those who responded to his 7th email.
Then he asked us all to look around and see how many were still standing. There were about 1/2 the group still standing. Had he stopped at 7 emails he would have lost over $400,000 in revenue, which was nearly all profit since the facilities had already been rented for the weekend and there were very few incremental costs with the additional people.
So whether your selling online or over the phone or in person, be sure to follow up at least 15 times before giving up.