If a sales manager looks at the opportunity list for any sales or service representative they’ll notice that a proportion of customers have not been contacted. The opportunity is stale, it’s had no contact for x number of days. These customers usually fall into two categories: hard to talk to or difficult to manage. By that I mean in category 1, those people who are busy, way too busy, so they are never available to talk about an opportunity or your product. It’s important therefore to find the right time to talk to them, follow-up and it’s probably not in the 9-5 time frame.
Good Sales People Always Give Follow-up
Good sales people are prepared to start earlier or stay later to contact these customers and it pays off. I recall ringing a large customer quite late one night and unexpectedly their supervisor answered the phone. I explained who I was and what we had been talking about in terms of our product offering and after 20minutes or so of overcoming some early objections and explaining the benefits he asked me in for a meeting where he and the person I’d been ringing constantly were both able to talk about how my product could solve their issues.
In category 2, I mean those people who are difficult to deal with. The representative may have a personality clash or just find the person not on the same page in the discussion. Now is the time to suggest a team colleague who may be able to help and follow-up.
