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Follow-Up Strategy to Speed Up the Sales Cycle

Speedometer
Recent research indicates that B2B sales cycles have lengthened.  In the meetings industry, hotel, CVB and other hospitality industry suppliers are telling us that they have to “chase” clients more than they used for that signature on the contract.

In our post last week we promised to share a strategy we have implemented in our own lead generation process as well as client projects.

This approach was taught to us by our “sales coach of record,” Colleen Francis of Engage Selling Solutions.  We use this when we have discussed a business opportunity with the person and have tried to follow-up on at least 4-5 occasions, with no success.

First message: “Hi Sue, it’s Doreen from Greenfield Services.  Sorry I missed you.  I’ll call you again on Wednesday, at 10:15.”
  • Choose the date and time before you leave the message so that you are sure to be available.  I recommend choosing a time that is a little unusual – e.g. 10:15 instead of 10 a.m.  It stands out more.
  • Protect the time in your calendar right away.
  • At the appointed date & time, make your call!  This is a crucial, trust-building step! If you don’t get the person (and assuming you have dialled 0, tried with the assistant, etc.), leave another message:
Second message: “Hello Sue!  It’s Doreen calling from Greenfield Services.  I promised to call you today.  Sorry we didn’t connect.  I will call you again on Friday at 2:45.”
  • Remember to keep your tone light, never accusatory (guilt is a good thing only if the prospect feels guilty because you’re so nice, not because you sound like their mother).
  • Always apologize for missing them – it’s your fault not theirs (this helps with the guilt factor!)
  • Pick a different time frame for each message and let at least 2-3 days go by between calls. To help me keep track, I enter a note in my CRM each time I call, with the date & time I said I will call again.
  • I’ve tested this dozens of times in the last three months and I get a return call 2/3 times before my third attempt.  But if you don’t hear from your contact, try one more time.  Again, set yourself a reminder, and call at the chosen time:
Third message: “Hey, Sue.  It’s Doreen from Greenfield.  I’d promised to call you today and heard you were out of the office.  It sounds like I’m really lousy at guessing when it’s a good time to reach you!  Because I don’t want to be a “sales pest” I will send you a quick email, and perhaps you can let me know how you wish to proceed regarding our proposal?  Looking forward to it!
  • If you feel comfortable using humour (as I am), go ahead.  The point is to be yourself.
  • The above gets a couple of important points across: first, it shows that you have held your end of the bargain.  You are a trustworthy salesperson, and you deserve respect.  Secondly, it shows that you empathize.  Stuff comes up all the time and you’ll earn brownie points with the potential buyer when you tell them you understand.  It also lets the prospect off the hook if he/she has chosen another option or the business is not happening.
  • Realizing that sometimes people hate to deliver bad news, I follow up with an email:
Follow-up email: “Hi Sue.  I hope you had a great long weekend.  I’m sorry we haven’t been successful in connecting last week to discuss the proposal I forwarded on May 14.  I'm imagining that perhaps this no longer fits into your plans, or that other priorities have come up. Either is OK.  Can you just let me know whether it still makes sense for us to hold space for you for next month?  I really appreciate it.”

Recently when I sent the above to a repeat client who’d “gone silent,” I received a “thanks for understanding” email.  He was very apologetic for not getting back to me sooner and he promised to phone me with an update.  He called when he said he would, and now all is well again.  It was a relief for both of us!

In closing, keep in mind that you will also speed up your sales cycle if you have more business opportunities in your funnel.  Find time to prospect more often and you won't have to wait by the phone for that prospect to call you back.

Let us know about your strategies to speed up the sales cycle or whether you have any questions & comments!

Sales Efforts Making You LOSE YOUR RELIGION?

R.E.M.'s biggest U.S. hit Losing My Religion
Some think the 1991 song "Losing My Religion" by R.E.M. is about unrequited love while others maintain it’s about a Southern expression meaning "at my wit's end." Both interpretations are appropriate for those of us in hospitality sales who have lost faith that our efforts are paying off and that clients just don’t love us anymore.

Before you throw your hands up in the air, read on about what the experts are saying:

It’s not you

Contacts not returning your calls?  Hot prospect suddenly gone cold?  Even with business picking up, hotel sales managers and CVB account rep report having to chase buyers longer to get a commitment. Frustrating exercise, but the silver lining is that this is happening all over the place, not just in the meetings industry.

The Aberdeen Group and CSO Insights both have published extensive papers about how sales cycles have lengthened since the recession.  One possible explanation is that in rough times, buyers become more conservative; they stick with who they know even when they have not been completely satisfied with their current supplier.  With leaner staffing levels, it’s also likely there are fewer people to get the work done and meeting planners and tougher to reach!

At her April 2010 Sales Mastery Workshop, sales trainer Colleen Francis reported that, across various industries, closing a new B2B client now takes an average of 7 to 11 interactions with the customer.  That’s 7 to 11 conversations or meetings – not just one-way emails and voice mail messages.
So stop taking it personally.  It’s not you, it’s the way of the marketplace right now.

Be persistent

In a 2008 blog article, Brian Jeffrey describes that 81% of sales are made after the fourth call, by which time 90 percent of salespeople have quit calling.  Similar numbers are reported by Stanford University research whereby 85% of clients buy after the fifth meeting and 95% of sales people give up after the fourth.

Sales experts agree: be persistent, without being a pest (for tips on the latter, check out Brian’s article).

Have more leads in your funnel
From personal experience, it’s easier to have faith in your sales process when you have more opportunities in your pipeline.  Fear sets in quickly when you only have a few tentative pieces of business on the books…

The only antidote to this fear: prospect more to increase your volume of potential business.

Chewable Chunks

Start with past clients, or prospects you know you have a closer connection with through industry membership such as MPI, PCMA, etc.

When we haven’t prospected in a while it’s easy to get overwhelmed with a long list of overdue traces.  Start small: commit to reaching out to 10 customers in one hour.  On average at Greenfield Services, our Business Development Specialists connect with 1-3 live prospects in an hour (that’s the meeting planner – not the receptionist!).  Be prepared to leave a voice mail, and if you know the client well, follow-up your message with an email.

Next week, we’ll explore voice mail and email tactics we have successfully implemented in our Greenfield LEAD Generation Process.  Have a great week!
Contacts not returning your calls?  Hot prospect suddenly gone cold?  Even with business picking up, hotel sales managers and CVB account rep report having to chase buyers longer to get a commitment. Frustrating exercise, but the silver lining is that this is happening all over the place, not just in the meetings industry.
The Aberdeen Group and CSO Insights both have published extensive papers about how sales cycles have lengthened since the recession.  One possible explanation is that in rough times, buyers become more conservative; they stick with who they know even when they have not been completely satisfied with their current supplier.  With leaner staffing levels, it’s also likely there are fewer people to get the work done and meeting planners and tougher to reach!
At her April 2010 Sales Mastery Workshop, sales trainer Colleen Francis reported that, across various industries, closing a new B2B client now takes an average of 7 to 11 interactions with the customer.  That’s 7 to 11 conversations or meetings – not just one-way emails and voice mail messages.
So stop taking it personally.  It’s not you, it’s the way of the marketplace right now.
Be persistent
In a 2008 blog article, Brian Jeffrey describes that 81% of sales are made after the fourth call, by which time 90 percent of salespeople have quit calling.  Similar numbers are reported by Stanford University research whereby 85% of clients buy after the fifth meeting and 95% of sales people give up after the fourth.
Sales experts agree: be persistent, without being a pest (for tips on the latter, check out Brian’s article).
Have more leads in your funnel

From personal experience, it’s easier to have faith in your sales process when you have more opportunities in your pipeline.  Fear sets in quickly when you only have a few tentative pieces of business on the books…
The only antidote to this fear: prospect more to increase your volume of potential business.
Chewable Chunks
Start with past clients, or prospects you know you have a closer connection with through industry membership such as MPI, PCMA, etc.
When we haven’t prospected in a while it’s easy to get overwhelmed with a long list of overdue traces.  Start small: commit to reaching out to 10 customers in one hour.  On average at Greenfield Services, our Business Development Specialists connect with 1-3 live prospects in an hour (that’s the meeting planner – not the receptionist!).  Be prepared to leave a voice mail, and if you know the client well, follow-up your message with an email.
Next week, we’ll explore voice mail and email tactics we have successfully implemented in our Greenfield LEAD Generation Process.  Have a great week!

Only a Few “Good” Hours Per Week to Prospect

Blocking Calendar for Prospecting
Being in the business of creating business development campaigns for hotels, CVBs, and other meetings industry suppliers, we often get asked, “When is the best time to call prospects?”

Analyzing this empirically, we can now say the best time to prospect is on Wednesdays between 9:30 and 11:30 a.m. and 2 to 4 p.m.  Have a look:

While a year is 365 days, there are only 261 weekdays, though not all productive work days for prospecting.
Since it’s pointless to prospect around Christmas and New Year’s, that cuts out 15  days.  Take away 10 federal U.S., three Canadian holidays, plus another five religious holidays, we’re down to 230 days.

All Fridays before long weekends and Tuesdays after a long weekend should be off limits for prospecting.  Actually, come to think of it, prospecting should be banned from all other Mondays and Fridays throughout the year because Mondays everyone is grumpy and Fridays no one's at their desk.  Now we’re down to 130 work days.

July and August are a write-off; who wants to do business in the summer?  And let’s not forget the week when kids finish school in June, when they go back after Labour Day and off course the week of March/Spring Break.  That leaves 84 work days.

Then there are those other fun holidays and miscellaneous celebrations.  Who wants to be cold calling on Super Bowl Monday, Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day, Mardi Gras, or Halloween?  Let’s not forget patriotic days like Flag Day and Election Day!  Only 77 days left.

The average North American also takes two weeks’ vacation per year, and we all know it takes at least one week to prepare to go away, and one week to catch up after we return.  Another 20 works days gone.
Let’s not forget sick days!  According to the Society for Human Resource Management's 2004 Benefits Survey, the average North American is off 11 days for sickness, whether it is for themselves or to take care of someone else.  This means we only have 46 days left for prospecting.  A meagre 3.83 days a month, or less than one day per week.

Of course on that one day, probably mid-week, we can’t call too early, or over the lunch hour, or too late in the day.  Doesn't it make sense then that the best time to prospect is on Wednesdays between 9:30 and 11:30 a.m. and 2 to 4 p.m.?  But with voice mail, meetings and people travelling, is it even worth picking up the phone at all?

OK, by now you know what I’m up to.  I apologize to all of you who were looking for the silver bullet solution.  It doesn't exist.

If we try hard enough we will always find excuses why it’s not a good time to prospect.  This is a guaranteed formula for no sales!  Sure, there are days that are likely not as productive as others to be prospecting, but there are always people looking for a new supplier, no matter what the calendar says.  The point is to have a system and to do it consistently.

Do you have any success stories when you reached a prospect at an “odd time” and had a great conversation?