In this episode titled "Fortune is in the Follow-Up - The Art of Not Being Forgotten," host Mary Sue Dahill explores the often underestimated power of follow-up within your CRM system. With only 2% of sales occurring in the initial conversation, Mary Sue highlights the untapped growth potential through effective follow-up. She candidly shares her own challenges and offers practical tips for creating a personalized follow-up system that aligns with your personality and business reality. Discover how automating your follow-up process can lead to increased conversions and a more efficient business workflow. Join us as we unlock the secrets of successful follow-up strategies and stay tuned for more insightful episodes on CRM success.
Key Takeaways:
- Importance of Follow-Up in CRM Success
- Implementing Effective Follow-Up Systems
- Utilizing Automation in Follow-Up
Quotes
"Create a follow-up system that suits your reality, not your ideal. Aspire to be timely and personalized, but acknowledge your limitations."– Mary Sue Dahill
"Your process and your automation needs to match what you're comfortable with as a person."– Mary Sue Dahill
Featured in this Episode
Mary Sue Dahill
https://www.linkedin.com/in/marysuedahill
Chapters
00:00 – Introduction
00:22 - The Importance of Follow-Up: Acknowledging the Fear of Rejection
01:25 - Leveraging Your CRM for Effortless Follow-Up: The No-Brainer Approach
05:32 - Networking Follow-Up: Leveraging Automation and Step-by-Step Approach
07:36 - Streamlining Follow-Up: Utilizing CRM for Timely and Targeted Outreach
08:26 -Automated Email Follow-Up: Effortlessly Nurturing Relationships
09:35 - Boosting Engagement: Implementing an Effective Follow-Up System
09:56 - Streamlining Sales Tracking: Preparation, Automation, and Simplification
10:43 - Outro
Produced by: http://www.heartcastmedia.com
Mary Sue Dahill:
Would you like a 200% increase on your CRM investment? Hi there. My name is Mary Sue Dahill, and I'm the host of CRM Success Secrets. When you use CRM effectively, you will see an average of a 200% return on your investment. What that means is you've gotta actually integrate the CRM into your business processes and use it as the hub of your business. In this 5 part series, I will share the most powerful but sometimes overlooked CRM strategies. We've already discussed having a fierce focus on lead generation, which is the foundation of your success. In this episode, we will discuss how your CRM can help you make a fortune by simply following up. It is the art of not being forgotten.
So did you know that only 2% of sales are made in the 1st conversation. Yeah. That's right. 2%. So if you never follow-up, you are leaving that other 98% on the table. Knowing this, only about 50% of business owners will never follow-up with a prospect. If the sale does not happen in that 1st conversation that's it they move on. So if you were one of those businesses and We all have been one of those businesses at one time or another.
You're really leaving a lot of money on the table, So what we're talking about today is how follow-up will help your business, 1, but 2, How you can really use your CRM to make it easier and a no brainer. It is one of the 5 Most Powerful CRM Strategies There is No Question because everyone struggles with follow-up. So I struggle with follow-up. I have literally met maybe 2 people that are just excellent at follow-up on their own, just kind of their natural personality. Everyone else, we all struggle. So just being aware of that And looking at ways to use your CRM to help you do follow-up will make your business more successful. So you know follow-up as we all know is done so poorly across the board that when you do follow-up you're already differentiating yourself. So I mean that I have seen that many times, because I have automations. When I do networking, I put them in the networking automation and schedule a 1 to 1 because my goal is to meet, you know, new people.
I think it's a great way for me to Help them but also just knowing what I'm doing they can refer people to me and when I do that I send 3 emails over the course of probably 3 or 4 weeks where I just asked them to schedule a one to 1. Once they schedule, they're pulled out of that automation, but everyone's busy, and I don't know how many times I've received a comment that the person was appreciative that I actually followed up. So You will differentiate yourself just by following up. So why do we struggle with follow-up? We're scared of getting a no, which, you know, we only want yeses, I suppose, but that's a real thing if you're just scared of getting a no. Fear of Seeming Needy, and I think this is one that I definitely struggle with myself. I don't wanna seem needy, I don't wanna seem, Sales y, I don't wanna seem like I'm just chasing the dollar, but you know that's all in my head. This It's not necessarily how I operate when I am following them. And 3rd, this is another one that I do as distracted by other work because as business owners, we're wearing all of the hats.
And, you know, I know that I prioritize client work over other things, and When I am also procrastinating on things I don't wanna do, I will prioritize doing content development Instead of Doing Follow-up. So, these are things that everyone struggles with. You've got to know what you really struggle with so that you can create systems that balance you out. So how do you stop this vicious cycle? Like I said, you create a system for follow-up with your leads, with your networking, with prospects that works for your personality, and I just want to reiterate here that you've got to create a system, that fits with your reality not your ideal, you know who I want to certainly follow-up with everyone and be really timely about it and super personalized but the fact is I am never going to be that person. I can certainly strive to be more of that person but it's just not who I am so I need to create a system that is going to really help me Follow-up. And so I've played with lots of different approaches, and certainly as I've matured as a business owner, my process has evolved as well so, you know, it can always change with you. The other thing that will help you Stop this vicious cycle of not following up is automating your follow-up system. So one is you have to know what your system is, And 2 is use automation to help you.
So when I say a system, I'm really talking about what are your steps. So I like using networking because everyone does it. You know, you meet someone at a networking event. Your next step is to schedule a 1 to 1 meeting with them. After the 1 to 1, you want to have some way of staying top of mind with them over, you know, many months So this is where it differs, but I like to, send a postcard about a month after we meet and then, I like to Schedule a second one to 1 about 3 months or so later and then kind of meat maybe, every 6 months or so. So that's kind of my cycle for my follow-up system. So how do I automate that is, because I'm using online booking tool for my networking, I can actually schedule The postcard to go out, I already know what it's gonna say, and then I can schedule an email to be sent about 3 months out, after the 1st meeting to start trying to book another networking call. So I have really sat down and thought about my follow-up system for networking, and then I'm using automation to actually deliver. So that is just one example, And I've set up a lot of very simple follow-up systems for my clients. And, again, they're very personal, and when we're setting it up, we go through the same process of defining it, you know, what's your 1st step, what's your 2nd step, what's your 3rd step, and then what do you, what can you really do? You know, if some people create steps that are, as I said, ideal, So, they really don't feel very comfortable with it and so they get hung up on or stop doing it at that point because it doesn't feel comfortable.
So When we're automating, we do talk about that. You know, if they don't feel comfortable with personally taking, You know sending a personalized email they're definitely not gonna do it or if they automate their emails and again they don't totally feel comfortable with The wording in the emails, they're not gonna add people to the automation. It's just as simple as that. So your process and your automation needs to match you with what you're comfortable with as a person. So here are just some other suggestions of how your CRM can help you. You can add a date to your CRM for follow-up to occur. You know, you met somebody In October, maybe you want to follow-up with them again in January. Put a date to it.
It'll create a task, send you an automated notification, to follow-up. So that's a really simple one. You can also add them into an automation that automatically sends the email for the follow-up or next step. You can also, Add them into a kind of drip campaign. Maybe you want to share about your business over A few months like if you're networking and you just wanna help them understand what you do, you have a little drip campaign you add them to, that is also a great follow-up. So the impact of just setting up a simple follow-up system is that you don't miss the follow-up step. So instead of being 50% of businesses that never follow-up after the initial conversation, You will now be the other 50% that does. And the more often you follow-up, the higher conversion you have for Sales.
So the impact of that simple follow-up system is that you are following up. 2, it helps you generate your lead pipeline because you will see who is actually engaging with you through your process. If someone's not scheduling that 2nd networking call, well they're obviously not interested in Being a referral partner, interested in your business, or just simply interested in building their network, so hey, we're not gonna worry about them. And 3rd, setting up that simple follow-up system will just take it off your plate. You will be able to focus on having conversations with the people that are engaging with you. So, again, fortune is in the follow-up. You can make your follow-up systems 100% automated, Or you may use a more hybrid approach, which is what most of my clients do, but the point is that you have 1. So Take some time, sit down, and create your follow-up system.
It doesn't have to be overly complicated, But knowing what you want to send at what points will make it much easier for you to do it manually, to automate the whole thing or to automate parts of it. So thank you for listening, and the next episode. We're going to be talking about simple sales tracking. So that is just a great follow-up to follow-up. See you
