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.

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