Improve Your Business - Embrace Follow Up (Part 2)

If you read my article in the previous issue, you will know I am passionate about follow-up as the best way to maximise sales. In fact, salespeople who don’t have a robust follow-up process are not salespeople. At best, they are order takers; rather than building relationships, they rely on price to make sales.

A salesperson who doesn’t follow up is not a salesperson, just as a pilot who can’t land a plane is not a pilot.

The flooring industry doesn’t have this problem alone. Over the years, I have had quotes from many different businesses, and I can’t think of any that made more than a single cursory attempt to call me to get my business.

Robust follow-up is the only way to get more than our fair share of business.

Follow-up looks different from project to project, but to make sure we are on the same page, let’s take the example of a simple residential renovation. As a salesperson, I would follow up multiple times in a short period until I have won the job or I’m told I have been unsuccessful. At this point, salespeople will say to me I’m being pushy. No, I’m not. I am letting the prospective customer know I want to work with them.

If the prospective customer is unhappy with hearing from me, they can tell me not to call again. Thirty-four years in sales is a long time, so I won’t be adamant that I have never been told not to call back, but I can’t recall it. Along the way, I have made more sales than I would have without those calls. Of course, I have been told that I missed out to a competitor. This is the nature of sales. It hurts, but I thank them for the opportunity, and the good news is I have one less quote to follow up on.

If follow-up is a silver bullet, why do salespeople not do it? Salespeople will tell you they don’t have time and don’t want to be “pushy”.

As a salesperson, I can tell you with absolute certainty that we have time to call our prospective clients, but we don’t because we fear rejection. It’s the obstacle I must overcome before every follow-up call. Even as I write this, I know there are follow-up calls that I have been putting off. None of us like hearing that we have been unsuccessful, and we avoid it by not making the calls.

Unfortunately, salespeople will perform to the level they are permitted to perform. As business owners, we must control how our salespeople do their jobs. As a business owner, an excellent way to focus our mind is to total all the overhead costs associated with our showroom space for a month: rent, electricity, sales salaries, and vehicle costs, and then divide that total by the number of quotes we do in a month. The result is how much each quote is costing you. It’s likely hundreds of dollars. How happy are you that you miss out on maybe more than half of these opportunities through lack of follow-up?

It comes back to our expectations as business owners. When it comes to expectations, salespeople usually have it easiest; when the economy is good, they make satisfactory numbers by being order-takers. When things slow down, they don’t make their numbers and we put it down to the economy.

Creating a sales environment driven by robust follow-up is the single most significant opportunity for growth in 95% of flooring businesses and not something we can leave to our salespeople. It starts with us as business owners. We will look at how we do this in the next issue, but in the meantime, you might wonder how you can capture the sales information to help your salespeople be more effective. If you would like to see how RFMS can assist you, we will be happy to join you in an online meeting 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