Don’t Let Them Get Away

  by Ann Barr

Here is a startling fact: 87% of customer inquiries are never followed up by a sales contact.

This amazing statistic came from surveys conducted by Sales & Marketing Strategies & News and Selling magazine.

What a shame.

So many sales people spend time and energy preparing for—and making—cold call after cold call (which most sales people hate to do).  They go through the anxiety of deciding what to say, then make the cold call and often get rejected.  But here are interested consumers calling with questions, and 87% are not being given the courtesy of a call back.

There are many good software programs available to track incoming and outbound calls, but there is one simple tool that everyone can use, starting now.

But first, back to that 87% of customer inquiries not being followed up. I experienced this—as a customer—last week.

I placed a telephone call to several different shoe stores, looking for a particular shoe, and finally found one store that had the shoe in my size. After learning that they had the shoe I wanted, I asked for directions to the store. The person on the other end of the phone very nicely gave me directions, along with store hours.

But that was the end of the conversation!

What was wrong with this? Here I was, a prospective customer on the telephone, and the person at the shoe store never asked me for any information—and never attempted to get any sort of commitment from me. After all, his store had exactly what I wanted; what could he have said to get a commitment from me?

He could have asked for my name, and said: "I can hold this pair of shoes for you today and put your name on them. What time would you like to come in to try them on?"

That question would have pinned me down to a specific action taken at a specific time that—most likely—would have ended up in a sale.

Okay, now back to the sales tool: This is a simple form you can download free (in a pdf document), the New Prospect Call-in Report, at http://www.profitbyphone.com/Forms.htm.

This form should be on the desk of everyone taking incoming calls. And at the end of each day, sales managers should collect the completed forms and make sure someone follows up with prospects. 

Don’t let interested consumers get away without getting information from them—because if you do, your competitors will surely end up with these customers!

You can download the New Prospect Call-in Report free – today - and it will help you to NOT be one of the 87% not responding to customer inquiries.

If you fill out this form every time someone new calls in to ask a question about your products or services—and then you follow up afterwards with this prospect—your sales will increase and you will not be one of the unfortunate 87%!

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Ann Barr is a consultant and sales trainer who has

written eight books on sales and marketing
available on her web site www.sellingsupplies.com