Follow-up, it’s Back in Style

After a few recent store visits, after talking to Sale Mangers and salespeople, I believe the tides may be changing again. Just a few months ago when a customer reached out to a dealership, they were ready to buy a car. According to the managers and salespeople that I spoke to, people are beginning to start shopping again. They are not buying a car from the one dealership they visit, and we need to get back to basics and start following up with our non-sold customers. Additionally, if you are tired of grinding away each and every month, tired of spending hours and hours with customer who just wanted to negotiate price, price, price, you may want to start following up with your sold customers too.

We have all heard the talk about following up and why it is so important, so why don’t we follow-up? The reason is simple, most salespeople don’t believe that follow-up works. Most salespeople do not think that following-up with customers is worth their effort. They believe that they are better off waiting for that next customer to come to them. They prefer to start from scratch at building a relationship with a new customer. They prefer to go through the price grind all over again. They prefer to spend, hours and hours with new customers to make a minimum commission. This makes sense doesn’t it?

Of course, it doesn’t. It actually sounds like insanity to me. I understand that follow-up is work. I understand that you typically do not get instant gratification from your follow-up and this is probably one of the biggest reasons that most salespeople believe that follow-up does not work. These salespeople are just wrong. Follow-up not only works, it is life changing. Executing the right follow-up program removes the limits on the number of cars you can sell and before you know it you are selling 20, 30, 40, even 50 plus cars per month, without taking a fresh-up, phone-pop or internet lead. Not only will you sell more cars each month, but you will also do it for more profit and higher commission.

“The fortune is in the follow-up.”

Here is why you need to follow-up:

• People are busy – If you are like most salespeople, you feel like if you follow-up with your customers too often you are going to come off as pushy or spammy. However, that is really just an excuse that you tell yourself, to allow for laziness. Everyday hundreds if not thousands of companies a vying for your customers attention, either via phone, text message and email. This means that the chance of your communications getting lost or forgotten about under this pile of other communications is pretty high. In addition to that, life happens and your customers busy. Not every customer is on top of their email, phone, and text game like you are. Not only that, they also could have got sick or be traveling. These are all things that could lead to a customer’s lack of response. This is why it is so important that you follow up often.

• People need to hear from a salesperson often – Another reason why follow up is so important is because customers will need to hear from you an average of seven times before they finally decide to buy from you. That’s right, seven times. This means that sending one email, making one phone call, and sending one text message is just not enough. This also means that if they don’t engage with you the first time, it doesn’t mean they are not interested. As stated previously, maybe they are just busy, or maybe they haven’t heard from you enough yet.

• You are giving away money – Every time you stop following up with a customer you are leaving money on the table. You are saying that you do not need the commission that you would earn from selling that customer. Most salespeople don’t believe this to be true, however it is. And do you want to know how I can say this with such certainty, because I know that customer that you gave up on is going to eventually buy from someone else, and that salesperson is going to earn your commission.

• The data doesn’t lie – According to Hubspot, the follow are some impressive sales statistics:
  • 80% of sales require 5 follow-up phone calls after the meeting
  • 35-50% of sales go to the dealer that responds first
  • If you follow up on a web lead within 5 minutes, you are 9 times more likely to convert to a sale
  • 63% of people requesting information on your manufacture today will not purchase for at least three months – and 20% will take more than 12 months to buy
  • 50% of leads are qualified but not yet ready to buy
  • 93% of converted leads are contacted by the 6th call attempt 

• It’s easier than ever to create consistent follow-up – Your dealerships CRM system is one of your biggest assets. You must learn to master it. You must setup your own processes and templates inside of the CRM. Do not use the excuse that your CRM is not setup properly to not follow up with your customers. This most difficult part is creating the processes, then the content (templates), and then setting all of this up in your CRM system. However, once this is done, the CRM will walk you through everything that needs to be done.

• Consistent follow-up puts you ahead of the game – Once again, according to Hubspot, 44% of salespeople give up after one follow-up attempt. This means that if you stay consistent with your follow-ups then you’re already ahead of half the salespeople you may be competing with. And that that means, the more you follow up, the more you increase your chances of making money.

As it was said earlier the data doesn’t lie. Follow-up is not only the key to catapulting your career, but also the key to catapulting your bank account. If you want to earn more money than you ever imagined possible, COMMIT to following-up, it truly is easier than you think!