B2B companies spend a lot of money on organizing and attending events, exhibiting at conferences, and participating in various trade shows. Here, they meet prospects by the thousands, and with most meetings, people exchange business cards. However, these physical cards often just pile up in drawers, get lost, or are simply just forgotten about. This leads to a loss of important contact details from potential buyers. With the help of business card scanners, like ScanBizCards, you can easily scan these cards and store the information in a centralized database like a CRM and marketing automation system. This is the first and most critical step in sales - accurately capturing leads in your contact database so you can do timely follow-ups. From this database, you can easily segment the leads into different groups which will help you to devise the perfect follow-up plan for each of these categories.
Prospects, nowadays, however, take time to make a buying decision. In a typical B2B sale, there can be more than one decision maker, and it takes anywhere between 5-8 follow-ups or conversations to close a deal. This is why having a proper follow-up plan is important. Prompt and regular follow-ups, in fact, help with conversions. Yet many sales reps aren’t excited about it. They find the task time consuming and reps are more inclined toward chasing new leads than closing open ones. Hence, it is important to educate your sales teams why follow-ups are so important.
Here is why sales follow-ups are key to closing more deals.
Emails Can Get Lost—Follow-ups Are Essential
It’s highly unlikely to get a response from prospects with a single follow-up email. This is because:
1. Your email can get lost as your prospects are receiving many emails in a day
2. The prospect may not have the time to reply as he is traveling or is busy with other urgent matters
3. CTA may not be clear
4. Value prop may not be clear
5. Mails can land in the spam folder
Studies have shown that in the B2B industry a lead needs around 8-10 nudges across different channels before one can get a response. Hence a follow-up is important. Simply sending a single email is unlikely to work. A regular follow-up will also open up a dialogue with the prospect, thus helping in brand recall and in building your brand’s worth.
Follow-ups are Key to Lead Nurturing and Qualifying Prospects
Statistics have shown that “61% of B2B marketers send all lead generation directly to sales; however, only 27% of those leads will be qualified.” This is why nurturing the leads is so vital.
Collecting information about leads at events is step one. Adding the information to a centralized database is step two. However, the process does not stop here. To be able to close more deals you need to nurture them so that they feel that they are valued. For this, a regular follow-up, without being too pushy, is needed.
1. There are times when a prospect will remember your product offering and your brand’s name and yet will not purchase the product. Research has shown that only after a person has heard about the product around seven times that purchase happens.
2. Conversions will not happen with every lead that you generate. Yet, keeping in touch with them is important because they will spread positive information about your brand to those in their circle. Also, there is always the chance that if you can give them a good deal in terms of discounts, freebies, and others, they might just make the purchase as well.
Emails Can Help to Plan a Better Event in the Future
When you host an event, it is always good to know what the attendees felt about it. This would help you to know what you did right and where you can improve in the future. So as to get feedback from the attendees, a prompt follow-up is hence essential. However, getting feedback is a challenging task and you need to put in a lot of effort in this regard.
1. When you send a questionnaire through emails, preferably keep them in the multiple choice question format as these take up the least time to answer.
2. You could create a Whatsapp group and get feedback over chats. This will keep the conversation a tad more informal and the attendees might thus be forthcoming with their views.
3. Incentivise the feedback by offering various types of freebies to those who participate in the survey.
Once you get to know about the issues, do accept them and try and find out more rather than get defensive about it. Only when they feel that you are able to accept frank feedback would they want to tell you more.
It Gives the Opportunity to Say ‘Thank You’
If you have organized an event, one of the main factors of its success was because people actually attended it. Hence, as a follow-up you should thank the attendees. This gesture of yours will create a good first impression. In this thank-you email you can:
1. Add photos from the event
2. Tell them about any forthcoming show or event
3. For the important people who attended, you could even send a gift along with the mail
If you use the ScanBizCards app, you would be able to scan the contact information from all business cards, which will then get uploaded into the centralized database. Using information from this list, you can efficiently reach out all those who showed up at your event.
Emails Can Generate More Publicity Post-event
Post event marketing generates a lot of publicity for your brand. This, in turn, improves the possibility of greater lead generation. When you promptly follow-up with people after an event, the buzz about the event continues. When you find that some attendees are sharing positive feedback on social media, do engage with them and even reach out to them for formal feedback. The more the word spreads, the more would be the footfall in our next event - hence always follow-up.
Emails Can Offer Key Insights About Your Ideal Customers
Events might lead to a big number of leads. However, not all would . However once you have all the contact information in one place, reaching out to prospects individually would become an easy task. A business card scanner app like ScanBizCards is what you would need to install on your smartphone in this regard. Once you have communicated with all your prospects you would know who from them are really interested in your offering and could be a prospective client.
Emails Help Gather Data that is Relevant
1. Follow-up emails and calls will help you to gather information about the areas where you need to improve. This could be about an event that you hosted, a new offering that you launched, and others.
2. While speaking you might find that some questions/queries are being raised by prospects. You could make a list of these oft-asked questions and keep the best answer prepared for them.
3. Based on your interaction with the attendees you would be able to analyse what the ideal customer profile for your offering is. In the future this would help you to generate your leads accordingly.
While it is very important to follow-up with prospective clients, it would bear fruit only the strategy is a well thought out one. Some of the factors that go to make a follow-up an effective one are:
1. You should be prompt with your follow-up. Ideally the first email should be sent 48 hours after the meeting/event
2 You should time each of the follow-up emails or calls so that the person does not feel that you are being too pushy
3. Don't wait till after the meeting to decide your strategy - make your follow-up plan a part of your marketing plan. This should include the time schedule, the email you will send, and how you will reach out to those who don't respond to your calls or reply to your emails. This could be via SMS, Whatsapp, or even an after-event party
4. Your follow-up emails should have content that is interesting and relevant. This can include links to latest blogs, a discussion about emerging trends, offers and discount coupons, new features that have been added to your product offering.
Summarizing
The goal of a follow-up plan is to convert prospects, maximize sales and bring in more revenue to the business. Hence, if you have an effective follow-up plan that is consistent and regular you would be able to gain the trust of the prospects - increasing your chances of converting them into loyal buyers of your brand.
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