Improve Your Business - Embrace Follow-Up (Part 1)

I discussed the importance of implementing an effective sales process in the previous issue. I finished the article with the following statement:

Sales is the engine room of our business; when it stalls, our business stalls. In my experience, the most significant change for good that can be made in a flooring business is controlling, understanding and fine-tuning the sales engine.

I know. Easier said than done. We will start with maybe the most challenging aspect of sales: follow-up, the best way to increase our conversion rate yet the most overlooked. More accurately, the most avoided. We need to understand why our salespeople avoid follow-up, so we will look at that in another article.

I will restate something else from my previous article. Many salespeople believe their conversion rate is 75-80%. In fact, despite what they think, most salespeople have conversion rates of less than 50%—some even less than that.

So, a mind experiment.

Imagine we live in a world where we can only make a sale if we make four follow-up calls. In this imaginary world, our conversion rate would be guaranteed to be 75%, but only if every opportunity is followed up four times. What would our store's sales process look like if this was the world we lived in? Would we be happy for our salespeople to choose not to make those four follow-up calls? No, sales would become a process; quote the job, follow up four times and win 75% of all quotes. Our salespeople would be expected to make those four follow-ups to keep

their jobs.

You might be surprised that this imaginary world is, potentially, our world. I won’t guarantee a 75% conversion rate, but it will be significantly higher than current conversion rates. Also, some opportunities will need less than four follow-ups, while others will require more.

My point is that we lose sales because our salespeople don’t adequately follow up on opportunities.

This leads us to the next question. If you were to ask your salespeople what the correct number of follow-up calls is, you would likely get answers ranging from two to four.  The actual answer is that there is no fixed number of follow-ups that we make before we stop; we continue the follow-up process until we either close the sale or learn that we have lost the opportunity.

From my experience in retail flooring and software, I know how powerful follow-up is, but it doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It happens in a managed structure. The elements of this

structure are:

• Visibility of sales opportunities, actions, and outcomes.

• Monitoring, measuring, and coaching.

• Reliable and timely reporting on which to base monitoring and coaching.

• Sales budgets.

• Recognition for achievement.

There is some heavy lifting to create and keep this environment up to date. It can be accomplished within the systems that retailers use today, but realistically, most flooring stores don’t have the systems to make it a sustainable reality. 

RFMS, on the other hand, has all the tools needed to create a sales structure and environment in which your salespeople will be effective. Many people in our industry connect computers and software with office functions, such as invoicing and financial reporting. RFMS, on the other hand, manages all the operational aspects of your business, including sales. If you would like to see what RFMS might offer your flooring business, we would be happy to show you.

Chris Ogden is a consultant and Managing Director of RFMS Australasia (RFMSanz.com), a supplier of IT solutions for the flooring industry. Chris has an extensive background in all aspects of the flooring industry, and he can be contacted at cogden@rfmsanz.com