Handling Active opportunities

Assuming that sending one follow up email after your demo and hoping everything will go smoothly and quickly would be an overestimation of your sales skills 😝 . It does happen though.

So when you've made the proposal email, it's essential you follow up correctly. You did the demo, you made the proposal it is your responsibility. Use close.io to set tasks, follow up reminders, ... Remember the goal here is to get details on how the decision making process is going, but in the end we need a Yes or a No.

The better you've asked your questions about their challenges, the better you'll be able to tailor those follow ups, so getting to questions right, spending enough time and making notes during that is essential. You're in fact prepping your follow up.

The check in email

This is the utmost basic thing you need to do. Checking in with the person to see if they already had the chance to look at your offer. This is ok to do this once, but it becomes more difficult if you already did this before. So try to tailor that check in as much as possible:

• If you have an idea on timing ( a project they want to use this for was planned, they've cancelled their previous tool, they're looking to make a decision before xxx )
• If you have an idea on their specific challenges and problems.

The check in call

This is the audio version of the email, making it a lot more pressing. You give the signal of "Listen I'm not messing around, I'm following up with you" and that's alright. Just make sure that you have some other questions prepared for when the prospect has nothing new to share. Otherwise it can become a very short and awkward call. You can ask questions about how the evaluation process normally goes? Does the prospect think it's relevant to do another demo with a colleague?

The missed-call-email follow up

If the check in call hasn't been responded, follow up with an email. Start the email with "Hi, I just tried calling you ... I'll try again tomorrow." Most people will respond now, because they know you're really want an answer. Again do this polite, have your extra questions ready to check progress.

Social follow

If a prospect isn't responding well to your follow ups, try connecting on linkedin, twitter: like a message she shared, retweet a tweet. Showing that you're still there and interested in what she's doing. Be genuine, don't like stuff you don't actually like.

Feel free to send a DM thanking her for connecting and a quick reminder of the project.

Shifting Dynamics email

You'll probably get to a point kinda regularly where you really feel stuck. Because you followed up x amount of times. You feel like doing this again will only annoy the prospect. So it's time to try and shift dynamics, ask them to help you. Literally asking them will trigger them to do so, even if the project is stuck outside of your contacts deal, they will feel inclined to give you insights into it.

Pretty powerfull to use, but again, be polite and provide as much assistance as possible.

Hi xx,

I've followed up a few times but got no response.
Help me out here. What is it going to take to make this happen? This has been going on for too long. Help me out here, what do we need to do?

Thanks.

The deep follow up email

When you haven't gotten any response for a few weeks now, it's time to spend a bit more time into drafting a deeper follow up. You go a bit further where you're a bit disappointed in not hearing from them.

We were in touch about Prezly a few weeks ago, you seemed kinda keen in exploring this further with your team. But I haven't heard from you since. What is blocking you?

Then you look at some recent news they put out there (on social, current pressrelease, ...), and you try to hook into it.

I noticed you recently launched X, how did that go? 

The feature updates follow up

Also helps is sharing some new updates you think are relevant to the user. It's been a while since you last spoke, so probably some new updates when live. You can make a list of those, asking if one of those would be relevant for them, asking for a catch up. Some examples

The closing follow up

I'm not sure this really works, since people are often to far gone or embarrassed that they haven't responded earlier that they will ignore your email. But you can ask why it didn't work out, ... and mark the opportunity as lost accordingly.