Build Your Follow-Up Muscle — Business Development Leads
Before COVID19 landed on our shores, one of our blog posts, Are You Sitting on Buried Treasure?, focused on potential opportunity lost by not following up effectively — or at all on leads from trade shows. This shortcoming was expressed by business owners themselves, reflecting on the performance of their own organizations: 80% said their teams did not follow-up on tradeshow leads.
This statistic relates specifically to trade show follow-up, but surveys that more broadly analyze business development efforts across multiple channels show that weak follow-up efforts in general are a considerable hinderance to achieving growth objectives.
This is a time of reckoning:
Now is The Time to Build Your Business Development Follow-Up Muscles
Strong follow-up strategies and skills have never been so critical.
Working in business development since 2001, we know well how difficult it is to break through to a prospect in the first place and hold the first conversation. Despite advances in technology, the initial breakthrough is still incredibly difficult.
Once ground has been broken and a relationship initiated with a first conversation or meeting, everyone would like to think that getting to the next meeting and ultimately the close would be a fairly routine process that moves along at a pace resembling the familiarity of the standard sales process.
It’s just not that simple in “normal” times. Consider the wrinkles that COVID has thrown in, many of which will linger, if not remain permanent:
Remote work can reduce the benefits of helpful assistants. Can’t reach your prospect by phone? Chances are greater that their assistant is now working across town, if not across the country; assistants may not be as nimble as before in helping track your prospect down. Catching your prospect may be trickier even if they are not travelling at pre-pandemic frequency.
Distractions may be greater for your prospects. While more may be working from home and travelling less, many may also be juggling schedules with their spouse, particularly where children are in the work-from-home mix.
Although prospects may be more physically isolated and in their office more predictably, other “noise” has increased. Physical isolation does not translate into “waiting for the phone to ring”. Video conferencing has mushroomed. As travel, trade shows, industry events, and other in-person meetings have decreased, a rise in email marketing, social media, and other digital communication venues vies for attention. For email alone, HubSpot reported in 2020 that marketers sent 27% more emails than they did before COVID.
In a general business development survey of purchasing prospects, 53% related that salespeople representing new suppliers were not sufficiently consistent in following up after an initial meeting or call. One such prospect related that he got exasperated with salespeople who didn’t stay with him after a good initial interaction, going on to say “We had a good meeting and then, as always, I get slammed. The salesperson left a voicemail or two, maybe an email and then he gave up.”
So much potential new business is being left on the table for poor follow-up. Our next post will offer some Follow-Up Strength-Training Tips. If you’d like ideas in the meantime, just email, message, or give us a call.
