Creating a Follow-up Regiment for Your Sales Team

August 29, 2011

Don’t expect that your sales team can read your mind.  You, of course, have an idea of what an appropriate follow up regiment looks like, but do they? Probably not.

This is one of those little details that many expansion stage sales teams overlook. Yes, it seems a bit OCD, but if you haven’t articulated your expectations, you can’t get mad at your team for the lack of follow up touches during a certain time frame. Consider putting these items in your sales handbook.

So what types of follow-up schedules should you be documenting and sharing with your team?

  • Follow-up schedule with an inbound lead (there are different priority levels for different inbound leads)

    • “Contact me” request
    • “Demo” request
    • “Content/Whitepaper” request
  • Follow-up schedule with an outbound lead from a campaign
  • Follow-up schedule post webinar
  • Follow-up schedule post trade show
  • Follow-up schedule post demo/presentation
  • Follow-up schedule post proposal delivery

What is an example of a follow-up schedule (assuming you can NOT get in touch with the prospect)? Have at it:

 

Now, your follow-up schedule may likely go farther out than 9 days, but you can at least catch my drift.

Once you’ve established your follow-up “rules”,  you will need to track whether or not they are being followed. It is incredibly important to enforce that everyone logs every single activity in real time in your CRM – both tasks and completed activities. If you can enforce these types of things when new hires are onboarded, you (and your pipeline) will be in a MUCH better position at 30, 60, 90 days out and beyond.  Your rules should ultimately become second nature to your team.

What other sales-related activities require follow-up regiments?