We plan, we research, and we spend time and energy trying to organize ourselves to follow up with our clients and prospects.
We have done everything right to this point. We have educated our prospects on how we help them solve the problem.
We calculated the ROI with our prospects and are guiding them through the purchase process.
We have demonstrated our value over the competition, and we have open dialogue as we continue to build trust and a relationship.
We even inked the follow up meeting on the calendars.
We have all done it at one point or another, we asked “Have you had a chance to look over the documents I sent?” Not only is this exhausting but when it does not lead to a sale, it’s defeating. Why is it exhausting?
Because you put your energy towards something you believed in, a problem you helped solve.
An email attachment tracking tool sets the follow-up timer
If you’re not using email attachment tracking to follow up later in the sales cycle then you have put in a lot of time and effort on this deal that may not be interested enough to review your proposal. If early on, then consider it an indicator. This can be a signal of what’s to come. Strong conversations, pitches, value prop, but you are falling short on engaging your client OR you just don’t know how engaged they may be.
One way to be effective is to have some information from the first time you talk to a prospect/client and share a document with them. This document may be the presentation, or the tri-fold or a discussion doc that documents each and every discussion you have with prospects and is built collaboratively with them. The information you need to be effective or, the indicator, is simple.
You should be informed when your buyer receives the document or opens it. At least you have some information that they have potentially looked at what you have sent. Now take that a step further, what if you knew what pages they looked at and how much time they spent on a page? You have information now about the buyer that can help you have a strong follow conversation.
Let me give you a simplified example of not only being effective but efficient with your time.
Post meeting, Mary sends the presentation to the buyer, 3-days later, she gets an email notification that the buyer is currently looking at the file.
She then checks the data a bit deeper and finds out the buyer skimmed (3-5 seconds per page) through the presentation but focused about 40 seconds of time on page 5 and page 6 of the document.
Being efficient, Mary plans to call the buyer in the afternoon, being effective she knows page 5 and 6 focused on 2 case studies around successful implementations.
Mary calls the buyer later that afternoon to understand if the client would like to have a more in depth discussion with the implementation team so he can understand the companies unique approach to successful implementations.
This is a value based and value driven discussion.
Let’s dissect this scenario a bit.
If Mary did not use insight to guide her actions, then she would have scheduled a follow up meeting at some later date, sent the presentation, put a reminder on the calendar to follow up, followed up to confirm the meeting, attended the next meeting and asked more qualifying questions for discussion.
She would have had no focus on the conversation. She may have had an agenda and maybe even an outcome or two that she wants before the end of the meeting, but she will have fish during the meeting to truly put some effective next steps.
With insight from an email attachment tracking tool like Slydeck
Mary could have solidified the next topic before the scheduled meeting.
She could have had other stakeholders invited to the meeting, her deep dive on the unique value of their implementation can put the buyers at ease that with Mary’s help they will feel comfortable that things will go smooth.
Not only can she have focus on the follow ups but Mary can actually shorten her sales cycle, identify key stakeholders earlier and not to mention, identify the deals that she should focus on by way of being notified at the moment of the buyers interest (viewing the document).
Tracking sales materials helped Mary to focus on buyers interest
Now to circle back on the whether or not sales follows ups are effective, you have to ask yourself if you are armed with the right insight.
They can be effective AND efficient when you have insight but when you don’t, you may just be spinning your wheels and wasting time and money.
The net result of having insight means you can be more efficient with your time which drives more deals in the pipeline which translates to more deals won which of course equals a bigger paycheck.
