Conrey is for Closers

Follow Up skills are by far the most important skills any salesman can practice.  You need to be in constant contact with as many relevant people as you can be.

• Follow up with your active leads so that they don’t make a decision without you knowing
• Follow up with your current clients so that they know that you weren’t just around for the sale and then disappear
• Follow up with your past clients so that they don’t forget about you when it is time for new work
• Follow up with your dead leads so that if they have buyers remorse you can swoop in and save the day
• Follow up with that one guy who you met at a bar one time and exchanged cards with, you never know….
• Follow up with the guys who used to work with you to see what is going on outside your sphere
• Follow up with your neighbors and competitors to see what they are up to and to share useful information
• Follow up with every promise and commitment you make so that people know that if you say it you’ll do it.
• Follow up with your goals so that you can know how close you are coming to reaching them.

The list could go on for pages but today is the last day of the year.  I’ve met many of my goals for the year with this blog, including still putting content up there.  Stay tuned for more, and  Follow Up, Follow Up, Follow Up!

The most powerful tool in your arsenal is your voice.  Never forget this.  When you are trying to close a deal pick up the phone and call the buyer, or even better go see them face to face, send an email only as a last resort.  When you are trying to solve a client’s problem pick up the phone and get them real time feedback and solutions.  Don’t make them wait for an email response from you when you have time.   Yes email and other tools are valuable for what they are, but they are asynchronous.   When you take the time to answer the phone or place a call, you are using the only truly non-renewable resource you have: your time.  That is a powerful and meaningful thing for busy people.   Don’t abuse that because their time is just as non-renewable as yours – but if you aren’t closing deals try to pick up the phone for more calls and type fewer emails.

Your clients are not lotto tickets. You don’t have winner and loser clients, you aren’t betting on them $5 at a time. You aren’t going to make it rich on one deal that looks like a winner while you’re throwing your loser tickets away. I see plenty of developers treating each client or project as though if they don’t win on Wednesday night then it’s never going to win.

If you are doing this – please stop, or at least throw your Thursday morning lotto tickets to me. Your clients are much more like a 401(k) investment – you put in your money and time and you wait for it to mature. I didn’t pick a retirement account on accident. If you invest in your clients and your projects, and you keep putting that investment in and make it work, one day you won’t have to work.

Lotto winners often go broke afterwards because they don’t know how to maintain that level of success. It was a lightning strike, a personal best performance. People that put away a ton of cash for retirement rarely die broke, they remember how to work their investments to work for them.