CRM for efficient sales follow-up — Never miss out on a potential big deal ever again.

CRM for efficient sales follow-up — Never miss out on a potential big deal ever again.

Rigorous follow-ups in business demonstrate one's determination to build relationships with your customers. The end result of these successful relationships is, of course, more sales. Simply put, a follow-up is the process of proactively communicating with customers to complete an activity—in this case, a sales rep carries out a set of repeatable steps to build relationships, taking the prospect from the early stage of awareness to the final sale.

Why following up in sales is important
  • Never miss out on a potential business opportunity
    In any organisation, losing leads (especially hot leads) means the loss of potential business. By not following up with your leads, you will never know if they could become opportunities, or not.

    Let's use the example of a clothing line. 150 prospects visit the company's website and express interest in multiple designs. While some add clothes and accessories to their carts, others leave the website, perhaps planning on returning later, while some others leave the site altogether. If sales reps fail to follow up with them, many of the leads who hoped to return to the site later may forget, and end up becoming lost leads. 

  • Fulfil your customers' expectations
    If you don't regularly interact with your customers, you may never know what they want. This could eventually result in them losing interest in your products and services. In the clothing line example that we used before, following up with their prospects will help the company understand their expectations and direct them to their choice of clothes and accessories. Follow-ups make customers feel special, and helps them decide what they want next. 

  • More opportunities that end in success
    When customers feel that they are being heard and their needs are being met, they show more interest in your company's products and services. Not only does this provide a higher chance for opportunities, but with quality follow-ups, there is an increased chance that your prospects eventually make a purchase and become repeat customers. 
How to follow up 
  • Always prioritise the customers' preferences
    It is always essential to understand your customers' preferences before you attempt to make a sale. This involves studying their shopping interests, listening to their complaints, conducting customer satisfaction surveys, and more. By understanding what each person is looking for, you can make a sales pitch that speaks directly to their needs. 

  • Get in touch on the same day
    Reaching out to your prospects promptly is essential, as it will help them keep you in mind when choosing between multiple providers. For instance, after your first interaction, make sure that you send an email the same day, thanking them for their time and providing them with more details of your company. 

  • Follow up at multiple stages
    In a sales process, it is essential for sales reps to follow up with their prospects at different stages of the lead nurturing cycle. To that end, it's helpful for sales teams to create a plan for prompt follow-up to be applied at various stages.

    In our previous clothing line example, let's say:
    • After the first interaction, they send an email to their prospects, thanking them for their time and providing a list of their services.
    • They then send a follow-up email a week later reminding them of their interest and requesting a time for a call. 
    • If they do not receive a response, they can send their prospects SMS reminders.
Implementing sales follow up in Zoho CRM 

1. Set prompt alerts by creating "Activities" in CRM
In any business, sales reps are usually charged with a variety of tasks, such as field visits, frequent emails, and phone calls. Keeping track of all these tasks—both trivial and significant—and ensuring that they are organized, can prove to be quite challenging.

The Activities module in Zoho CRM helps you with this. It provides you with a clear view of your upcoming tasks, sorted by each customer or opportunity. An activity in Zoho CRM could be a follow-up task, an event, a meeting, or a follow-up call. You can assign an activity to any of your team members and associate them with a specific customer. Once scheduled, CRM alerts you of upcoming activities, and sends prompt reminders before they are due.

2. Prioritise leads for follow up using scoring rules
Often, it's difficult to decide which leads to start with for an active follow-up. Say you have obtained about 100 leads. How do you decide where to begin? You can go in chronological order, but it may be the smartest way to go about it. What if the leads that are likely to convert are at the bottom of the list? You may end up delaying your follow-up and damaging your big deals.

This is why it's important for you to identify the leads that are most likely to convert and reach out to them first. Now, how how can you do that? 
Imagine this: you have 10 leads with a score awarded to each of them.
  • Lead A is referred to you by an existing customer and is from your city. Since this lead might be more interested than others (referred by an existing customer) and it's easier for you to follow up given the proximity, this lead gets 10 points.
  • Lead B, on the other hand, is a cold call from another city. Cold calls do not always offer genuine prospects, and considering this lead is farther away, this lead only gets 5 points. 
Based on these points, you would choose Lead A to follow up with first. 
These scores can be assigned to your leads by the system automatically. You can design the whole process of automating these scores using "scoring rules" in CRM. Scoring rules help you prioritize the leads that are most likely to convert. 

3. Set follow-up triggers using workflow rules
In any business, there are a number of routine tasks that need to be carried out on a highly regular basis, like sending prospects welcome emails. If your sales reps carry out these tasks manually, it could take up a lot of their time, result in errors, and eventually affect their sales process.
In Zoho CRM, companies can use workflow rules to automate these routine tasks. Here are some examples of how you can use them to streamline your follow-ups at different relevant points: 
  • Automate a "Thank you" email to a prospect after initial contact is established. 
  • A week after the first follow-up, automate sending a newsletter via email outlining your products and services to remind the prospect of their interest. 
  • Automate the assignment of follow-up tasks to a sales rep as soon as a prospect is imported in CRM. 
4. Zero in on idle leads
Once you are done with one round of follow-up, you should resume your sales process with leads that have converted. You may eventually need to remove leads that don't yield a response from your follow-up flow.

As a result, there may be many leads that do not qualify and remain idle in your Leads module for a long time. Perhaps six months down the line, if you make an attempt at starting a fresh round of follow-ups with these idle leads, you may be able to strike a deal with some of them with a fresh approach.
This way, you don't have to rely on brand new business all the time. However, zeroing in on those older leads manually can be difficult. Don't lose hope! CRM makes it easy with the help of advanced filters.
With advanced filters, you can easily generate a list of leads that have not been actively followed up with within a selected time frame—six months, 2 months, a year, and so on—and you can quickly send them emails, reassign them to a new rep, or apply any other follow-up action. 

5. Follow up on the move:
Another great aspect of Zoho CRM is its ability to let you follow up on the move with the mobile application.
You can make your follow-up calls, update tasks, events, calls, and more⁠—all from within the app. In fact, right after you leave your client's premises after a meeting, you can associate notes immediately, instead of waiting to reach the office. You can also make a check-in within CRM as soon as you reach the meeting location. This will help you to record all your in-person appointments.

    • Sticky Posts

    • How to reach the official Zoho Support channels and avoid fake ones.

      Dear Customers, Thanks a lot for choosing Zoho! Our applications are built to help achieve your day-to-day business goals. We are committed to engaging with you, to understand and develop solutions that enhance your productivity.  We are happy and ready to help you use our services effectively. Understanding and avoiding fake support Just like using popular bank names and financial applications for phishing purposes, using Zoho and claiming to be providing Zoho Support or services with false numbers

    • Function #35: Close all tasks associated with a lead and create a new task.

      Welcome back everyone! Last week, we learnt how to close all tasks of a deal depending upon the deal stage. This week, let's look at a custom function that lets you close all of the tasks associated with a lead while simultaneously creating a new task, like when you need to halt all progress towards a lead while the lead is not available at the moment but create a reminder task. Business scenario: The success of a company, in one way or another, is determined by the leads it gets. Each lead is just

    • Zoho CRM Webinar - Redesigning Daily User Experiences with Canvas

      <br> Your users across roles use the CRM for day-to-day tasks that are necessary. Whether they perform their tasks on time, the right way, or at all depends on a lot of factors, including User Experience. Many businesses struggle with rigid layouts,

    • Join us at the Canada ZUG Meetup: What’s New in Zoho CRM

      Hello Zoho Community! Start your year with fresh insights into Zoho CRM’s latest updates and tools. Whether you're a CRM beginner or a experienced user, this meetup is crafted to help you optimise your processes and leverage new features. Explore practical

    • CRM Hack #2: Automate sending of birthday greetings to your customers.

        Hello everyone! What sets you apart as a sales person is your ability to add that personal touch to your business relationship with your customers. Sending a gift on a special day, or leaving a note wishing them on their birthdays, are small, yet significant actions that show your customers that you care. And these are actions done without any expectations :) You must be engaging with a lot of customers and it is highly unlikely that they all are your friends on Facebook or some social channel,

    • Recent Topics

    • More admin control over user profiles

      It's important for our company, and I'm sure many others, to keep our users inline with our branding and professional appearance. It would be useful for administrators to have more control over profile aspects such as: Profile image User names Email signatures

    • Please Make Zoho CRM Cadences Flexible: Allow Inserting and Reordering Follow-Up Steps

      Sales processes are not static. We test, learn, and adapt as customers respond differently than expected. Right now, Zoho Cadences do not support inserting a new step between existing follow-ups or changing the type of an existing primary step. If I realize

    • Clear Tag & Linking Between Quotes and Sales Orders

      Hi Zoho Team, In Zoho Books, when a quote is converted into a sales order, it would be extremely useful to have: A clear tag/indicator on the quote showing that it has been converted into a sales order. A direct link in the sales order back to the originating

    • Zoho Books Sandbox environment

      Hello. Is there a free sandbox environment for the developers using Zoho Books API? I am working on the Zoho Books add-on and currently not ready to buy a premium service - maybe later when my add-on will start to bring money. Right now I just need a

    • Add Direct Ticket Link to Zoho Help Center Portal in Email Replies

      Hi Zoho Support Team, We hope you're doing well. We’d like to request a small but valuable improvement to enhance the usability of the Zoho Help Center portal (https://help.zoho.com/portal/en/myarea). Currently, when someone from Zoho replies to a support

    • [Webinar] Deluge Learning Series - AI-Powered Automation using Zoho Deluge and Gemini

      We’re excited to invite you to an exclusive 1-hour webinar where we’ll demonstrate how to bring the power of Google’s Gemini AI into your Zoho ecosystem using Deluge scripting. Whether you're looking to automate data extraction from PDFs or dynamically

    • Connecting Zoho Inventory to ShipStation

      we are looking for someone to help connect via API shipStation with Zoho inventory. Any ideas? Thanks. Uri

    • Subform edits don't appear in parent record timeline?

      Is it possible to have subform edits (like add row/delete row) appear in the Timeline for parent records? A user can edit a record, only edit the subform, and it doesn't appear in the timeline. Is there a workaround or way that we can show when a user

    • New in Cadences: Option to Resume or Restart follow-ups when re-enrolling records into a Cadence, and specify custom un-enrollment criteria

      Managing follow-ups effectively involves understanding the appropriate timing for reaching out, as well as knowing when to take a break and resume later, or deciding if it's necessary to start the follow-up process anew. With two significant enhancements

    • Im Stuck in an EDIT ONLY WITH WIZARD issue

      So I found Wizards to be a really helpful tool in minimizing the exposure of redundant, superfluous fields to staff that would never otherwise have to edit those fields. My issue is, that when the record (in this case a lead) is created with a wizard,

    • Account upgrade

      Good evening, I upgraded my account and paid for it. From standard to professional. Unfortunately after the paiment my account was not upgraded. Please your advise. Best Regards Erik van Staverden

    • How to set ALL default dates of my organization to DD-MM-YYYY format?

      All replies to this question comes from a time where the UI was different. It's extremely frustrating not being able to find how to do this simple setting change. I want everything and everyone in my organizations to have DD-MM-YYYY date format by default.

    • How can I sync from Zoho Projects into an existing Zoho Sprints project?

      Hi I have managed to integrate Zoho Projects with Zoho Sprints and I can see that the integration works as a project was created in Zoho Sprints. But, what I would like to do is to sync into an existing Zoho Sprints project. Is there a way to make that

    • Can we generate APK and IOS app?

      Dears, I want to know the availability to develop the app on zoho and after that .. generate the APK or IOS app  and after that I added them to play store or IOS store.. Is it possible to do this .. I want not to use zoho app or let my customers use it. thanks 

    • Zoho Subform Workflows onAdd of Row

      Suppose I have a form with attached workflows onLoad. If I use the form as a subform, will it inherit the workflows or do I need to create new ones onAdd of row?

    • Super Admin removal

      I brought a sub, and I gave the Super admin rights to a person who is no longer with us, so I need to change, and I need to make myself the Super admin

    • Better Notes Commenting

      Hi, I'd like to suggest better collaboration tools for NOTES. The current notes section for Accounts, Contacts and Deals is not ideally suitable for any degree of communication or collaboration. When responding to a note, there is no ability to leave

    • Exporting Templates

      I have just spent 2 hours creating a project template for a Netsuite configuration, and want to share it with other Zoho Projects users - who have a different account. Is there any way to do this?

    • Power of Automation:: Streamline Associated Teams based on the Task Owner update.

      Hello Everyone, A Custom function is a user-written set of code to achieve a specific requirement. Set the required conditions needed as when to trigger using the Workflow rules (be it Tasks / Project) and associate the custom function to it. Requirement:

    • No Response from Zoho Support in 8 Days - Typical?

      I have a couple of issues I'm trying to work through. Initially, I was getting support from support@zohofsm.com, but I have not received a response in 8 days (11 on another question). Is this typical? Can I pay for support? For context, I am not spamming

    • Add QUOTE OWNER profile image to a Quote Template

      I can add their email address.. phone number, DOB. I need to add a users profile picture so when they assign a template to a quote they own it adds their picture to the cover page. I've tried hacking a solution together but there has to be an easier way.

    • Zoho Connections Desk API relative URL PATTERN_NOT_MATCHED

      While i am trying to do this: async function fetchTicketsFromDesk(timeFilter = 'current_month') { try { const response = await ZOHO.CRM.CONNECTION.invoke("desk_connection", { url: "/api/v1/tickets", method: "GET", }); const data = response.details ? JSON.parse(response.details)

    • Zoho CRM - Custom Views for Portal Users

      I'm looking for an option to customise custom views for portal users in CRM. It would be great if "portal user" was a permission on custom views.

    • 【参加無料】10/17(金) 東京 ユーザ交流会 Vol.3 参加登録 受付開始！

      ユーザーの皆さま、こんにちは。コミュニティチームの藤澤です。 10/17(金)に、東京・新橋で「東京 ユーザー交流会 Vol.3」を開催します！ 今回のユーザー事例セッションのテーマは、「Zoho Flowを活用した他社の決済サービスとの連携事例」です。 さらに、Zoho Flowに限らず、Analytics や Campaigns などの多彩なZohoサービスの活用方法について、豊富なご経験をもとにご紹介いただきます。 また、Zoho社員セッションでは、Zoho CRMを活用して日々の営業業務を効率化する具体的な事例をお話しします。業界を問わず、幅広い方にご参考いただける内容となっています！

    • Zoho Meeting Plug compatibility with newer versions of Outlook

      Documentation states that the zoho meeting plug in for outlook is only compatible with versions up to Outlook 2019 What is available to users of more up to date versions of outlook/office 365?

    • Getting Attachments in Zoho Desk via API

      Is there a way to get attachments into Zoho Desk via an API?      We have a process by which a zoho survey gets sent to the user as a link in a notification.    The survey has several upload fields where they can upload pdf documents.    I've created

    • Introducing Zoho's own SMS gateway

      We're thrilled to announce the launch of our own SMS gateway feature within Zoho Marketing Automation! This new feature enables seamless SMS campaign management alongside your email marketing initiatives, providing a more integrated and efficient way

    • Embedding in Desk articles

      We would like to embed documents in our Desk articles. When we use an iframe for the embed, we get scrollbars and a frame border. Neither of those is acceptable. I've spoken with the Desk Support team about what we want and they tell me that it cannot

    • Zoho CRM button to download images from image upload field

      Hello, I am trying to create a button in Zoho CRM that I can place in my record details view for each record and use it to download all images in the image upload fields. I tried deluge, client scripts and even with a widget, but feel lost, could not

    • Mass Update Contacts In Zoho Campaigns

      Is there a way to mass update contacts in zoho campaigns? I want to be able to change the content of a field for a few hundred contacts, and can't go through all of them individually.

    • report showing assignment type

      Hi, We've created a number of workflows to allow us to auto assign tickets to agents based on keywords and other criteria. I'm struggling to create a report that would show me what is the percentage of tickets that are assigned automatically via workflows

    • Option to Disable Knowledge Base Section in Feedback Widget Popup Hello Zoho Desk Team

      Hello Zoho Desk Team, How are you? We are actively using Zoho Desk and would like to make more use of the Feedback Widget. One of the ways we implement it is through the popup option. At the moment, the popup always displays the Knowledge Base section,

    • Placeholders in Ticket Templates

      We should be able to use placeholders in ticket templates. When we create a new ticket, our description field is shown to the client in the email they receive.  It would be very handy to be able to personalize that description field in our ticket templates to pull in the name of the client that the ticket is for. Using them in the subject field as well, so we can auto populate Account Names, etc. 

    • when the record is created the tag want to Show as Opportunity how i achive this using Deluge Script

      In the quotation i have the work flow schedule for create opportunity record in the module , on that time the quotation tag select as opportunity created. How i achive this using Deluge Script . this like i want to Do tag1 = Map(); tag1.put("name","Nurturing

    • Delete a channel

      I need delete a channel in tickets.

    • Copy / Duplicate Workflow

      I have workflows setup that are very similar to each other. We have a monitoring system watching servers, and all notifications - no matter what client it is about - will come from a  noreply@ address which is not very helpful in having it auto assigned to the right account. I have setup a workflow that will change the contact name of the ticket (currently it would say noreply@) to the correct customer which is based on the subject line, as that mentions which server the alert it is about. I need

    • Subtasks don't update parent task's times

      Hi there: I've recently upgraded to premium and check that subtasks completion % don't update the proportional completion of the parent tasks related to it.  We've been challenging with the problem of having to update twice or sometimes 3 times the completion of the related tasks. I've seen posts similar to this, of 3 years old.  Is there any roadmap for making this happen in a future release? Thanx César Ratto Lima, Perú.

    • Should I Use DMARC?

      When I configure Zoho Mail's DMARC settings, it's mandatory to fill in the RUA and RUF (Aggregate notification email address*, Forensic notification email address*) addresses. When we enter an email address in these fields, we receive reports from the

    • Mail ToDo & Tasks Webhooks

      Our company uses Zoho ToDo inside Mail to manage our tasks. When I create a task and assign it to a team member it does not notify them unless I add a reminder via mail. I'm trying to create a webhook for when a task is created to send a cliq message

    • Can't upload attachments.

      I can't upload attachment in Zoho Mail.

    • Next Page