Do you follow up we quotes properly?
I bet you don't.
Or not properly,
not well,
and not every time. And the reason I say that is most people don't.
Most of my clients
are a bit haphazard about following up their quotes.
I've been a sales professional
for 20 years before I was a business coach.
And I could be better at it. I'm guilty.
It's boring, it's thankless,
and...
it can be a bit confronting, right? They might say no
if you don't follow them up. There's a chance they might say yes.
Certainly they won't reject you.
If you don't follow them up nobody rings you up to say you're not getting the job,
do they?
But if you ring them up they might say, "You're not getting the job.
You get rejected all those bad feelings.
You can also feel
like you're a bit of a scumbag, can't you?
"Please Sir, can I have some more? Please."
Alright, can I have some business?
So you can feel a bit weak and begging like Oliver Twist.
And...
and it can be a bit thankless. You can spend a lot of time leaving voicemails,
leaving messages,
talking shit to idiots.
So it can be and it can feel like a colossal waste of time.
So what happens is,
it's easy not to do it.
Now, I'm Jon
from Small Fish Business Coaching.
I run the 'Tradies Toolbox' Coaching program. I help
trades business owners grow and scale.
Part of growing and scaling
is winning more business.
And part of winning more business is being disciplined
about things like following up.
They say... people say... people like me I say...
say that following up
will help we win more jobs which of course sounds obvious.
Now, I found an actual statistic from HubSpot which is one of the market leading
internet marketing companies. And they say,
80% of sales closed after five discussions or five follow-ups.
Five...
and that 40% of sales reps give up after one follow-up.
So if you don't make at least five phone calls to somebody,
you could be missing out
on 80%
over the work.
Particularly, I think this might be true
in a trade where the first kind of quote often starts
with just an idea. "You know, I wonder if we should get the fence fixed."
That kind of thing.
So it can take time. I'll tell you a story of my own
recent purchase decision.
The washing machine broke last Wednesday.
And...
we reasonably, urgently
needed a new one. The stuff starts piling up, doesn't it?
So...
Michelle made a few calls. She called the good guys. I think she looked at
somebody online. I came home and she said, "We need a new washing machine.
I've looked at one here, it's this much. Do you think we should drive
to Byron and get one?"
And I said, "Let's look at appliances online." And I looked at
someone else. And then at the good guys again.
And then another website and then went back to appliances online.
And we placed an order.
So within the space of three or four hours
we... you know, we talked or engaged with businesses four or five times
before we went, "F#$% it, let's buy that one."
And that's just a washing machine.
They're all the same.
So... and a very simple, quick, urgent decision, right?
So...
if we're interacting five times before we make that small decision,
other people with a bigger decision to make
are interacting more times, right?
So my personal experience,
lends support to what HubSpot is saying that lots of sales happen
after the fifth
encounter, the fifth touch point, or the fifth follow-up.
So...
my point,
if you're not following up, you're missing out on a lot of
business. And you shouldn't do that
because you've spent the money to get
the lead and you spend the time and energy to do the quote.
You should get
the follow-up
happening.
And I say that word, those words carefully, right?
You should make it happen.
You don't necessarily have to be the one who does it, do you?
So back to how difficult and shitty
making the calls. It's a bit shit. It's not very fun.
You don't actually decide not to do it, do you?
You just kind of defer the hard ones. And most of us will call the nice people
that we liked. All the ones we feel are hot to trot and are going to close the deal.
I know I'm guilty of this.
And I won't call the ones
didn't sound that interested. I'll make an excuse or I'll put into the bottom of
the list and probably never get to him.
Or call him once.
And then we won't
follow them up again because it's boring feels a bit thankless and pointless.
So what do I suggest, Jonny the business coach?
I'm going to suggest that you follow up every single quote
at least three, or I'm going to say five times
now since I've done the research. At least five times or until
the person says, "No, thank you."
I would follow them up and ask them to make a decision. Remember this is part
of a sales process. So you should
be following people up five times or six times before you give up.
Your business
should be doing that.
So let's say we've established that five follow ups
is important before you stop calling.
If you're very small and you don't have
much money or you're starting out, you're going to have to do it yourself.
Bad luck.
Suck it up.
It's probably worth the time.
And I know we've
kind of got this mental thing going on where it's kind of easier and more
exciting to go out and see a new person,
and feels more hopeful and positive. But it is worth
investing the time and effort in those follow-ups.
I make my own
follow-ups or most of them. Although I will say that writing this
video made me rethink.
And I'm going through a process now with Lindsey and Venus where they're
doing some of the follow-up work for me. So I'm in the process
delegating it
to my team.
So if you're not too small and you have a team, that's another option.
You can get someone else to do it. You can delegate it to one or two
of the people who work for you
and they can learn to do it. They'll never do it quite as well as you.
But given that you're busy
and spread very thin,
they're probably do it more consistently and with more discipline
than you. That's certainly the case for me.
So if you're not great at the calls and you don't like it,
and you can acknowledge to yourself that you kind of defer it a bit,
get someone else to do it.
Alright, most business coaching comes down to this kind of choice, right?
Do it yourself,
delegate it to somebody else.
Or the third option, outsource it,
something not in your business. And I'm going to talk through those three options
here.
And this is often what we do when we're business coaching.
We've decided what needs doing and
then we have to work out. Would you do it?
Will you you get someone to do it internally?
Or should you be spending your time elsewhere? Should we get someone
else to do it?
Can you afford to pay someone else to do it?
Is there kind of capacity in your existing team?
What are those options? What do they look like, right?
So here are what the options look like
for following up on new quotes.
If you've got staff,
they can do it for you.
If you don't have staff or they
don't have the skills, or you don't think they'll do it, or they don't want to,
you can outsource it
to someone who kind of you know readily acknowledges out there
in the marketplace that they're good at this stuff. And some people are.
Most of us aren't. And some people are. Some people will
smash your phone calls readily.
So my client Jamie who makes garage doors in
Wollongong and we've spoken about it before.
He's got three people in the office
and one of those people follows up every quote religiously with discipline. She's
very good at it. She's very consistent. She talks to people nicely. She closes a
lot of business and he has a very successful
garage door installation business.
So that's one way. She's quite expensive.
She's a full paid, full-time person.
She... I don't know how much of a job she spends doing this, 10
or 20%. So it's costing him bit money to have this happen.
But it's working for him, right? She's winning work.
So your staff can do it if they've got the skills.
You teach them how to do it if you work it out together.
And another option,
is to outsource it to an external agency who says, "We're good at this." And
I'm going to talk to through 2 or 3
that I've come across, that I know.
I've mentioned Office Shed before. They're my friends,
Jay McClure. And she has a team of
admin people that are all women. So I'll call them girls who will do lots of admin
type work for you including
following up on your quotes, and saying, "You've got the
quote are you going to book a job in?"
It's relatively simple to do.
And they'll do that for you. They cost about 50 bucks an hour.
And it's like hiring
part of a person, right? You can say, "I'll have two hours a day
and pay 50 bucks an hour so 100 bucks a day."
And it's a bit cheaper than hiring.
I recently met these people, Quotenamic.
And that's all they do.
They follow up your quotes.
So this guy runs a successful trade business.
He's moved on from that into... into this new business that he's setting up.
He set up a team in the Philippines
who are relatively inexpensive. And...
they will follow up your quotes for you
for a only 100 bucks a month. Now, there's a limit to
how many calls they'll make for that money.
But for a 100 bucks a month,
they'll smash through calls and for follow-up all your quotes.
And he tells me...
that it lifts people's close rates quite dramatically.
So that's another option, a cheap option.
And Smoothworks is a friend of mine. I met him. We also
have met reasonably recently through my networking.
And he does something similar.
He's got people in Australia.
He uses some software to manage what he doesn't
have, people who will follow up me quotes and chasing them for you.
So you've got some options, right? You've got options
that are reasonably inexpensive to get other people
to do this for you,
100 bucks a day, 50 bucks a day, 100 bucks a month,
similar.
A 100 bucks a month. Not a lot of money. So frankly,
I don't think there's any excuse for you not to do this. If you want
to grow up as a business person, build a proper
sales process
that brings you good margins, that closes more deals without so much
angst and stress. And...
that helps you take your business to that next level.
You should be doing your follow-ups.
And if you want help with that broader sales process,
of course, you should be talking to me.
See you!