The Power of Follow Up

You have probably heard that in sales, particularly in B2B, follow-up is a must.

What if I tell you upfront, that without following-up, my response rate on LinkedIn is close to 35-40%. With only 1 follow-up message, the number jumps to 55-60%. With a 2nd follow-up message, the number floats around 75-80%.

Just to be clear, it does not mean if you keep sending messages, your rate will be 100%. Also, even though follow-ups play a significant role in improving your response rate, but it is not the only factor. Not getting distracted from the main topic, of course, but still want to mention that these 2 things play a significant role as well:

• your profile - is it optimized?
• the way you start your conversations 

Getting back to follow-ups, I'd like to share some practical points from our own experience, which have proved to be working.

To start with, if you don't want to lose conversations from sight in general, you need to have a CRM in place or a system that will help you track conversations. At Leadarto we use a CRM, but you can use free tools, such as Trello, or even google sheets / excel for this.

If you are having a lot of conversations at the same time and doing things on scale, I can guarantee you will lose them from sight in a couple of days if you don't have a system for backup.

OK, we have a system in place, now what? We need to make sure it reminds us who to follow-up and what type of follow-up to do. For that, once we are starting our conversations, our prospects should be in our system. The other good thing about using a CRM, is that it allows you to measure your efforts and make necessary adjustments if needed. I like to say:

If you are not measuring your efforts, you cannot improve them.

Also, by using a CRM, you have clarity on your pipeline. Sometimes we might think that we are extremely busy and are having a lot of discussions with our potential customers and we are just rocking, but trust me, your sales pipeline will give the exact and data driven results which can help you analyze your current potential.

TYPES OF FOLLOW UPS

By saying follow-up on LinkedIn many people think of direct messages only.

Well, that's true to a point. As I was mentioning in the beginning, you should send 1-2 messages. I personally do not send and don't recommend to send more, however that's a personal preference, I guess. But what if you still get no response?

I have some good news.

If you have sent all your follow-up messages and still no luck, don't rush to mark that as lost.

LinkedIn gives you additional touch points for this. Instead of sending just another "have you seen my message" one, do one of the following:

• view their profile
• endorse them for a skill (if you believe they are good at it)
• Like their post/s
• Comment meaningfully on their posts

You are probably asking: "Why should I do this?"

Every time you do one of the above steps, you show up in their notifications. Combining that with the fact that 57% of LinkedIn users are on mobile, there is a big chance they will get notified immediately. Isn't that what you want? To remind them of you.

Why Should I Follow-up?

If you are asking this question, I hope it’s just a rhetorical one.  

No matter what industry you represent, no matter what you do, if you want to generate B2B leads, you should follow-up.  

Sales is in the follow-up

Here I want to be very clear. When following up with your prospects, you will get yourself in one of these 2 scenarios:

1. they have seen your message and are just ignoring it
2. they have or have not seen your message, but they either forgot to respond or your message just got lost.

Briefly on the above 2 points.

I understand it's not the best feeling to be ignored, BUT if you are in sales or just want to sell your offering, that's part of the game. You just have to suck it up and move one. Don't take it personal. You cannot execute a social selling practice with a 100% response rate.

There are also cases, however, that people did not mean to ghost on you. They either marked your convo to get back to you later on, or were just too busy. Especially if you are prospecting to C-level executives, their schedule is usually crazy and you have to fight a bit for the attention.

I can bring 100s, if not 1,000s of examples from my own prospecting experience, when after a 3rd follow-up message the prospect got back to us apologizing for not being responsive and offering to jump on a call himself.

The other, probably better option is to be active on LinkedIn, post content that resonates with your ideal customers and be in front of them all the time. Depending on the case, your prospect might even be notified that you have shared a post. This is, of course, another topic and requires some effort, but a worthy one.

Key Takeaways

1. Have a clear strategy - don't act randomly
2. Have a clear system in place, preferably a CRM tool
3. Measure and improve your response rate
4. Test to understand what works and what not
5. Use the opportunities that LinkedIn has provided - create additional touch points by engaging.

And most importantly, friends, be authentic, be yourself.