Sunday, August 27, 2006

Followup Or Die

How to Fix the Biggest Mistake in Marketing that Almost Everyone is Making
You Will Jump Ahead of the Crowd by 80% or More with This One Simple Change
It took me over three years to learn why I had been successful and also why I had been failing so bad in sales. It all boiled down to one thing: My ability and determination to follow-up with prospects and with new customers and associates after their initial introduction to my product line!

Why so long to do a "duh" you might ask? Very simple! My trainers and mentors did not know to follow-up either! This is part of the reason that salesmen have a very high failure rate. People do not understand marketing and thus the strategic importance of following up on prospects.

This statistic shows the importance of following up. This shows that the most sales by far are made from the 5th through the 12th contact!

2% of sales are made on the 1st contact
3% of sales are made on the 2nd contact
5% of sales are made on the 3rd contact
10% of sales are made on the 4th contact
80% of sales are made on the 5th-12th contact

Realizing that, don't you think it would be good to go out and learn how to be good at FOLLOW-UP correctly? 80% of all sales are made from the 5th through the 12th contact! Wow! Are you beginning to see why your closing rate is so low?

Here is another example of why repeated exposure is important. How many times a day do you see or hear about Coke or Pepsi? You would think those companies don't need to advertise; haven't we all made our decision on which soft drink to buy?

Actually NOT. Repeated exposure to soft drink ads increases your chance of buying one of those products. Coke and Pepsi would NOT advertise if that were not the case.

Coke and Pepsi understand the importance of FOLLOW-UP.

Gil Cargill, a former VP Sales from IBM who now is a sales management consultant provided the following statistics from the Sales & Marketing Management Institute that are interesting relative to how all buyers identify and pursue buying plans:
(1) 87% of all leads are never pursued
(2) 45% - 63% of the all leads eventually buy the product or service from someone
(3) 48% of all sales leads that are pursued are dropped after the first call/meeting
(4) 80% of all sales close after the fifth contact/meeting (see above)
(6) 73% of sales people do not have a growth plan for their top five accounts

His main point was that effective business development methods ensure we are "in front of the customer" when he/she make the sales decision. Tenacity and planning are more important than eloquence!

Fortunately for you, technology has solved 90% of your follow-up chores. Devices known as autoresponders send out message campaigns from one to dozens of messages spaced out at intervals you specify. Go to http://www.fredraley.com/ to get on my Success Path Marketing email list so you can see one at work.

You can also search out "autoresponders" on the net to look for one you can use to suit your purposes. I use Parabots for all of my needs. It is a bit advanced for many but if you are serious about marketing, you should get it. See Parabots for details. It is a steal with free installation.

Remember, if you are not following up between 5 to 12 times with your prospects, you are losing up to 80% of your potential sales.

That's a LOT OF MONEY for YOU to LOSE.

See a complete, integrated marketing system at
http://www.fredraley.com/Postcard.htm

(Ask me how even your Mom can put audio on her site to skyrocket her sales.)

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Fred Raley
Author, Trainer, Speaker and
Online Marketing Expert
Fred@ABC-Success.biz
(703) 730-1079
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