Improving Your Follow-Up With Prospects
Posted: July 31st, 2009
Having an effective follow up system for following up with your prospects is vital for creating a large networking or direct sales home business, and yet it is one of the most neglected areas. In my own business it took a lot of time before I was able to implement a system that helps me to properly follow up with all my prospects. If you have your own system that is effective then stick to it, if not, give this one a try.
The key is to be able to follow-up CONSISTETNLY and PERSISTENTLY with WORTH WHILE prospects. Obviously I’ve indicated a few words that I feel are vital to your follow up system. If your follow-up is not consistent you will not get consistent results. In fact after a while the people you are following up with should come to expect your phone call every month or so as they get used to your follow-up system. The second word is persistent. Don’t give up easily. Many times the top leaders you will enroll will be the hardest ones to get to listen to you. You may need to follow up with them many times, even every month for a couple of years, before the TIMING is right for them in their life. The final word is WORTH WHILE. Worth while prospects are those with potential, those who may easily become leaders in your team. They are not people who are negative, have a poor self-image, or are rude. If you have someone with these qualities it is not worth taking the time to follow up with. Sometimes I’ll give people with one of these qualities a second chance with a follow up, but if I feel the same attitude is still there, I will move on.
The following system should allow you to be more consistent, more persistent, and just do better follow-up with those who are worth while following up with. You need a couple of key items for this system. First of all you need a day planner with a WEEKLY VIEW. A weekly view is important because you need to be able to see what is coming up a few days in advance. A day planner that covers only a day or two days on each page is inadequate for setting appointments and follow up with people. Secondly you need to grab several STENO BOOKS. Steno books are those coiled note pads that are in most cases about 60 double-sided pages long. They are available at almost every business stationary store, and at least around here, they also can be found in the Dollar Stores in the local mall. I recommend purchasing 3 to 6 of them, depending on how much time you are putting into your business and how many prospects you are following up with. Finally, pick up a handful of legal pads which will also be needed for your new system.
Start off by labeling the steno books. The steno books are going to be used to divide your prospects, and you should label the books based on how you want your prospects to be divided. You may decide to divide your prospects based on geographic area, past home business experience, or as I do, based on the source of the lead in the first place. I have several books for warm market prospects (those I further divide by geographic region), then I have a book for leads I purchased, and others for people who visited my web site. Once you have determined the best way to divide your prospects and have labeled your steno books appropriately go ahead and number the pages in the steno books. Number only the pages facing you as you flip through the book, in a sixty-page book, you will naturally number them from one to sixty. Each page is going to hold all the information about ONE prospect.
The legal pads are really going to be the starting point for our prospecting system. Every time someone visits your web site, is on a list you purchased, or whose business card you get when you meet them in person goes on a legal pad. I recommend having a legal pad set up for each source of leads. On each line put one prospect. Write their name, the state or province they are from and their phone number. Then draw a box so you can check them off and leave most of the line blank for you to write in initial information as you talk to the prospect. The only people on the prospect list are current prospects who you need to make a first contact with. It is basically a first approach list. I like having several different legal pads going at all times – in other words several different lists of prospects I’m working off of. I try to keep only one list in front of me at a time and go through the full pad before moving on to the next pad. This method gives you a limited number of names to focus on at any one time. It is less overwhelming than looking at a list of hundreds of names on it.
After you reach someone for the first time there name gets moved from the original legal pad to one of two places. Move this information immediately – don’t wait until you’ve made any other calls. Record the information in the proper place now, and then go on to make more calls. If you have booked the appointment with this person, then record the time in your day planner, and move the information you took during the conversation onto another legal pad (title this pad ‘current appointments booked’). This way when you get to the time of your appointment you can pull out your ‘current appointments booked’ legal pad and have all the information you need about this individual. If for whatever reason you are unable to set an appointment with this person you need to decide if they are worth while following up with. If you had a positive conversation with them, and it is just not the right timing (low on funds, busy with a different business etc..) then we’ll move them to your steno books, which will serve as a long-term follow-up book.
The steno books are set up with one prospect on each page. At the top of the page record their name, state, phone number and best time to reach them. Then record the date of your conversation and all the information you have about the prospect. This includes things such as the reason why they want to build a home business, any information about their family, and other information from your conversation. Also record a note about when you should next be contact that person. Next open your day planner, going forward a few weeks or months to whenever you deem it is best appropriate to next contact that person. Most weekly day planners will have an overall ‘to do’ section for the week that doesn’t fit into any day in particular. In that section record the prospects name and what follow-up steno book and what page the information is recorded on. For example, you might have Joe Montana who you need to call the first week of August. You would go to the first week of August in your day planner, and record Joe Montana ABC – P1. This way when you get to the first week of August you’ll look down in your day planner and realize you need to call Joe Montana. You’ll know his information is in steno book ABC and on page 1. You will then go to that page, read up on everything you have recorded about Joe Montana and you’ll be in an educated position to make your follow up call.
With this next follow-up call, one of three things will happen. You may set up an appointment to give your presentation – in which case you’ll put the appointment in your day planner and you’ll put Joe’s name on the ‘current appointments booked’ legal pad. Secondly you may determine that Joe is not ready to hear about the business but is worth another follow-up call. In this case you’ll record the date and information from the call in your steno book and also record him in your ‘to call’ section of your day planner another month or two ahead. The third option you might find is that Joe is a continually negative person and is not worth following up with. In which case you’ll rip his page out of the steno book and move on. Remember you may need to follow-up with people many times before they will be ready to enroll in your business. Recently, I enrolled someone who I had contacted about a dozen times over the past year, and finally they were ready to enroll. However over a period of time your steno book will get smaller and smaller as more people enroll and you eliminate others from future follow-up.
Following this effective follow up system will allow you to keep track of who you need to follow-up with, when you need to call them, and you’ll also have everything you’ve ever learned about that prospect right in front of you. It will make you far more effective, will save you time, and will allow you to enroll many more customers into your business.
Danny Gamache
http://dannyg.makemoreathome.com
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