Benjamin Franklin wrote, “Remember that time is money.”, in his essay, Advice to a Young Tradesman. Although he was referring to sitting laziness, this aphorism is also true in sales. When you are following up with sales leads, time is money. If you close a sale, the time spent nurturing that lead was worth it. However, every lead that you pursue and do not convert into a sale is time that you cannot recover and leads to Follow Up Fatigue.
Therefore, you must know who your audience is. Otherwise, you are feeding the greatest time-waster in business, and that is, following up with people who do not intend to buy from you whether it is a tangible product like a lawnmower or a service like a real estate agent. Every moment you spend time with the wrong people, the right people are going to your competition.
Before we look at ways to attract the right people for your business, let’s look at three signs that may tell you if you are attracting and following up with the wrong people.
- More people are saying “No” than “Yes”
- People are not returning your calls
- People are unclear of what you do and what you can do for them
All three signs lead to time wasted. However, there are several steps you can take to ensure that you are following up with the right people.
Create your persona
We have spoken about personas in previous blogs. It is worth mentioning again because this is the foundation of your audience. A persona is a fictional representation of your ideal customer. They help you understand your customer’s pain points, personality traits, interests, and buying behavior. Personas provide guidance when you are creating email drip campaigns, landing pages with calls to action, and automated messages in your CRM.
Focus your marketing content on your customer
Your marketing and nurturing should focus on helping your customer solve its problem. Your content should be able to show the customer what you can do for them. It needs to be specific to their needs. Otherwise, marketing that is too broad will attract more unqualified leads than qualified. The wrong people will be curious, but confused, and a confused lead is not a good lead.
Use your CRM to segment audiences
Your CRM is a great tool to personalize and customize communication within audience segments. You can segment your audience by demographic, location, industry, product, and the list goes on. By segmenting you can follow up and nurture your prospects and customers more effectively. If a prospect does not fall into a segment, you may want to evaluate the quality of the lead. This can help you understand if you are attracting the right or wrong people.
Go where your customers are
There are networking events for everyone and everything, but this does not mean you should not go to every event. Here are two ideas that can help.
- Look for networking events (virtual and in-person) that fit your personas.
- Join LinkedIn Groups that are associated with your audience
Going to the wrong events results in following up with the wrong people. You will spend more energy explaining your business and your offering to someone who might care but has no need for it. The right events will connect you with the right people.
Conclusion
As a reminder, time is money. You can’t afford to waste time following up with the wrong people. Take advantage of your CRM to help you reach and nurture the right people. If you do not have a CRM, contact us at 301-332-0613 to learn about X2CRM and schedule a demo.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”More CRM and Follow Up Fatigue Topics” font_container=”tag:h2|text_align:center” use_theme_fonts=”yes”][vc_empty_space][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”2″ element_width=”6″ orderby=”rand” grid_id=”vc_gid:1631624381610-1bb4d7c3-ac39-4″ taxonomies=”24, 4″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
