Follow-Up

by angela gibson
(cincinnati, oh)

I am uncomfortable with following up for the sale, I feel like I'm bothering people. What should I do?

Answer

Hi Angela,
that is not an uncommon feeling and one that i have experienced myself.

What helped me was that my motivation to sell was to help the people I was selling to. If I could offer no help I'd get out of their way. So, if my product was going to help them I felt honour bound to follow up and that outweighed my concern about bothering people.

Remember the word sell is derived from the Norwegian word SELJE which literally means "to serve". If you have a product or service that can help your prospect you are not serving them if you give up when you feel uncomfortable.

Another angle with this is that when I gave a prospect a sample to evaluate i would always ask them when they wanted me to contact them again to assess their test results. So, when I was contacting them I would know and often say "this is when you told me to contact you". They'd explain why they had no results yet and often they'd be feeling guilty because they had promised to test the product. Often I'd just then ask for the next date they wanted me to contact them. I guess in this respect I was just helping them get over their own procrastination by applying Cialdini's principle of Commitment and Consistency.

Not sure this is the whole story. If someone out there has any other ideas I'd be pleased to read them

Hope this was of some help,
Regards Greg