Sales Lead Management: Are You a Victim of FTFU (Failure to Follow-Up)?
This post involves one of my pet peeves in marketing: the tendency of marketers to spend money and time to generate inquiries and then fail to follow-up (FTFU) on these inquiries. This failure can be fatal to the success of your sales lead management program.
Although it was for a low-ticket service, a recent personal example illustrates the point. I was looking for a guitar teacher to help take me to the next level. I jam with some very good musicians but I endeavor to be the one others’ emulate, not the one who emulates others. At any rate, I found what appeared to be a very qualified teacher at the Black Rose Acoustic Society website. I emailed this gentleman (we’ll call him Justin) and told him that I was ready to schedule a lesson to try him out, and if satisfied, was looking for a teacher for the next six months.
Two days later, I still had not heard from Justin and so I emailed my second choice. We’ll call this guy Paul. Within half an hour, Paul sent me an email with all the details I needed. We then had a quick phone conversation, agreed to his hourly rate and scheduled the first appointment. Justin called an hour later, apologized for taking so long to get back to me (he said he was busy), and seemed surprised that I had already hired someone else.
So what are the lessons of this example and how do they apply to B2B marketers who are selling more expensive products and services? Here are several:
- Always follow-up promptly. In the B2B world 3-8 percent of responders may be in an active buying cycle. You need to engage with these people quickly – otherwise your competition will surely do so. This is why, in my case, Paul got the business and Justin did not.
- Don’t let your “busyness” stop you from following-up. The prospect doesn’t care how busy you are; he or she only cares about what they need and when they need it.
- If you are extremely busy, at least acknowledge the inquiry and set an appointment to talk in more depth at a later date. This may buy you some time while letting the prospect know you are not ignoring them.
- While a phone call is preferable, sometimes a quick personalized email is a good first step, even if that email is generated via auto-response.
- Don’t practice optional behavior when it comes to sales lead management. Your follow-up strategy should be completely consistent and never subject to whatever else is happening in your business.
I have seen companies as small as an individual guitar teacher and as large as a billion dollar multinational software company, totally waste the money spent on their inbound leads due to a failure to follow-up promptly. Not all sales leads are precious but unless you know for sure that a particular lead is unqualified, you need to follow-up promptly. FTFU is a disease that can be deadly to the B2B marketer. Don’t catch it and if you do, re-read this post and cure your FTFU immediately.
Christopher Ryan
Related posts:
- Sales Lead Generation – by Christopher Ryan
- B2B Marketing Lead Reactivation “Phoenix” Project by Christopher Ryan
As with your other insightful articles Chris, this one rings true! All of us are busy, including prospects for our products…At the very moment they responded to an advertisement or demonstration they were in the zone and ripe for making a possible buying decision. Timing is critical. Prospects move on quickly to the next pressing issue and you don’t want your product or advertisement to become as memorable as yesterday’s lunch.
Trade Shows are a good example of having lots of hot leads in hand, which require immediate follow-up. I have personally seen great leads go dead because marketing or sales teams were too busy to get to them once the show was over…A business sin.
Yes this is true. Some companies spend good amount of money and time to generate leads but failure to follow up. Specially when it comes to B2B industry. There are heavy competition with similar vendor. If they are not responding within an hour. There are chances of losing the lead.
Nancy, your point about how timing is critical is correct. The shelf life of a B2B sales lead can be as short as 2 or 3 days. After that, the prospect may have decided to purchase elsewhere or may not even remember responding to you in the first place.
While we are taking on the topic of Sales Lead Management | Great B2B Marketing, every one of the mailing list hosting companies that I am aware of actually post your subscribers an email requiring them to verify before they are added to the email list. Although you may think this is a headache which will cost you some subscribers (such as the ones that can’t be bothered to reply to the verification request), it is actually useful because it will help prevent cases where a person’s email is used to subscribe to a list without his permission. At least, you won’t be accused of spamming anyone.
follow-up is a major thing to get more deals many companies are forget about follow the customers.. better follow them and give quick replay for them otherwise they will go for another option..