Have Your Prospects Forgotten About You?

If you are doing any reasonable amount of marketing you are probably getting inquiries from prospects on an international scale. Furthermore you are probably getting these requests via your website forms, email, skype chat and maybe even a few phone calls. Since you know that you can drastically increase the likelihood of making a sale by satisfying each person’s need for information quickly, you try to send information to each prospect as quickly as you can.

Now, after you’ve delivered that first round of information to your prospect, do you send them any further follow-up information? If you are like most network marketers, you don’t.

By not following up with additional information after that initial message, you let valuable prospects slip from your grasp. Here is a potential customer or business builder who may have been very interested in your business, but now they’ve lost your contact information, or were too busy to when your first message reached them.

Often, prospects will purposely put off making a decision, to see if you find them important enough to follow up with at a later date. When they don’t receive a follow up, they will certainly move on to another business opportunity or another business builder.

Is your business suffering due to inconsistent and ineffective follow up?
Following up with prospects effectively is more than just a process – this skill is truly an art. In order to be effective, you must design a follow up system, and stick to it! If you don’t follow up with your prospects consistently, individually, and in a timely fashion, then you might as well drop the whole follow up process.

Consistent follow up will get you results.

When I first started marketing and following up with prospects, I used a follow up method that kept me on track with my prospect follow ups. My database had the names and e-mail addresses of people who had specifically requested information about building a secondary stream of income. These prospects had received my first letter before they requested more information, so I used my company’s news as a follow up.

I would write follow up newsletters every now and then, and send them, in one mass mailing, to everyone who had previously requested information from me. While this probably did help me sponsor a few extra business builders, it wasn’t a very good follow up method. Why was I not being very effective in my follow-ups?

* My process was not very consistent. Proponents of this type of process tend to only send out follow up messages when their companies have “big news”.

* Additionally the messages don’t give the potential customer any additional information about the product or service in question. They can’t make a more informed decision after receiving a newsletter with company news as the content. If someone is wondering whether your company sells the best widgets, why would they care that you’ve just moved your headquarters?

* These messages convey a “big list” mentality to your potential customers. By creating follow up messages using this process, I was sending news bulletins to everyone I knew. I should have been sending personal messages to each individual who wanted to know more about my business .

Now, what follow up method would really work?

Following up with each prospect, multiple times, at set intervals, and with pre-written messages, will dramatically increase your conversion rates. Many network marketers using this same technique confirm that they have all at least doubled their conversion rates. However, to setup a system like this will take some planning.

First, you’ll need to create your follow up messages. If you’ve been marketing on the Internet for any length of time, then you should already have a introduction letter. Your next letter starts the beginning of the follow up process, and should go into more detail than the first letter. This letter should be filled with details that you didn’t have the space to add to the first letter. Explain the benefits of joining YOU and your company!

Your next several follow up messages should be rather short. Each letter should be written such that your prospects can skim the contents, and still get the full force of your message.

The next couple of follow up messages should create a sense of urgency in your prospect’s mind. Make a special offer, giving him a reason to move now instead of waiting any longer. After reading these follow up messages, your prospect should want to make a move immediately.

The phrasing of each of your final follow up messages should be in the form of a question. Ask your prospect why they haven’t made a move? Try to get them to actually respond. Ask if the cost is too high, the opportunity is right for them or the company doesn’t offer what they are looking for, or if they are looking for something else entirely. By this time, it’s unlikely that this person will join you. However, their feedback can help you modify your follow up letters, so that other prospects will join you.

The timing of your follow up letters is just as important as the content. You don’t want one prospect to receive a follow up the day after they get your initial informative letter, while another prospect waits weeks for a follow up.

Always send an initial, informative letter as soon as it is requested, and send the first follow up 24 hours afterwards. You want your hot prospects to have information quickly, so that they can make informed decisions while the interest is there.

Send the next 2-3 follow up messages between 1 and 3 days apart. Your prospect is still hot, and is probably still shopping around. Tell them about the benefits of joining you and your company, as opposed to your competitors’. You will make work with them to ensure their success!

Send the final follow up messages later on. You certainly don’t want to annoy your prospect! Make sure that these last letters are at least 4 days apart.

Following up effectively seems complicated, but it doesn’t have to be! So many prospects are lost because of poor follow up - don’t you want to be one of the few to get it right?