What is one technique that can influence whether or not your prospect buys from you or from your competition? The answer: Follow-up action. Follow-up is a marketing skill that separates the professional business person from the hopeful business owner or manager. I like to say, “The fortune is in the follow-up.”

FOLLOW-UP ACTION TIP: Know what you can expect to get for your follow-up efforts.

  1. What is the fortune that well-executed follow-up can give you?
  2. More visits which gives you more opportunities to convert those visits to sales.
  3. Top-of-mind positioning as prospective buyers investigate the industry and visit your competitors.
  4. Customer relationships that generate repeat business and the referrals that are your most cost-effective form of advertising.
  5. Competitive differentiation.

Why does follow-up give you a competitive advantage?

  1.  So few do it well, if at all. So if you simply do it, you’re already ahead of many of your competitors.
  2. It gives you another opportunity to be in front of your prospects and customers. Business strategist, Jeffrey Gitomer, says it takes as many as 10 impressions to get a sale and to begin to build a relationship. Follow-up action makes it easier to be there more often than many of your competitors will be.
  3. It gives you what I call “personalized positioning.” Good follow-up will lead your prospects and customers to think of you as a person who cares and has their best interests at heart. It also positions you as someone who ethically delivers.

When you follow-up with information of value, and you do it more than your prospects and customersexpect, they perceive more value in what you have to offer. And it makes you more believable. People will ultimately purchase from you based less on what you tell them than on what they actually believe of what you tell them.

Julie Wassom
“The Speaker Whose Message Means Business”
Marketing and Sales Speaker/Consultant/Author
Call me: 303-693-2306
Fax me: 303-617-6422
E-me: julie@juliewassom.com
See me: www.juliewassom.com