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.
Access your files securely from anywhere
Centralize Knowledge. Transform Learning.
All-in-one knowledge management and training platform for your employees and customers.
New to Zoho Recruit?
Zoho Developer Community
New to Zoho LandingPage?
Zoho LandingPage Resources
New to Zoho Survey?
New to Zoho CRM Plus?
Deliver unforgettable customer experiences
New to Zoho CRM Plus?
Deliver unforgettable customer experiences
New to Zoho Marketing Plus?
Everything you need to run your marketing
New to Zoho Marketing Plus?
Everything you need to run your marketing
New to Bigin?
Topic Participants
Anna Sakhi John
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 numbersFunction #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 justZoho 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 practicalCRM 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,
New to Zoho TeamInbox?
Zoho TeamInbox Resources
Zoho CRM Plus Resources
Zoho Books Resources
Zoho Subscriptions Resources
Zoho Projects Resources
Zoho Sprints Resources
Qntrl Resources
Zoho Creator Resources
Zoho CRM Resources
Design. Discuss. Deliver.
Zoho Show Resources
Get Started. Write Away!
Writer is a powerful online word processor, designed for collaborative work.
Zoho CRM コンテンツ
-
オンラインヘルプ
-
Webセミナー
-
機能活用動画
-
よくある質問
-
Ebook
-
-
Zoho Campaigns
- Zoho サービスのWebセミナー
その他のサービス コンテンツ
Nederlandse Hulpbronnen
ご検討中の方
Recent Topics
Uninstall unattended agent
Hello, I'm testing many use case before we purchase assist for our remote support. While we are testing what is the proper way to uninstall agent? I did uninstall from systray, from windows control panel but still ZohoURservice is running. How can I uninstall client side?Zoho Commerce Down?
Is anyone else's storefront down at the moment? Ours has been down for at lease an hour.Zoho Projects iOS app update: Dashboard widget on the home screen
Hello everyone! We are excited to introduce the 'Dashboard' widget in the latest version(v3.10.8) of the Zoho Projects iOS app. Dashboard widgets allow you to view the project progress visually without having to open the app. The widget enables you toIdea: Workflow Rule Trigger Only When Subform Row Is Updated (Thanks to New Inline Row Feature)
Hi Zoho team and community, With the recent update to Zoho CRM, we can now add or delete rows inside subforms without entering edit mode, using the inline Add row button. This is a fantastic improvement for user experience — seamless, fast, and efficient.Auto add new section based on document choices
Hi team, I'm wondering if the below is a possilibity within Zoho sign. We have an application process to become a customer of ours, we currently use Zoho Sign to manage this application and this works quite well. However, if the customer indicates 'YES'Change rate after xxxx kilometers
Is there a way to change the miileage rate after a certain mileage. After 5000 kilometers, we want the rate to automaticly change. Thank !Subform Entry Limit from a Subform Field (A different Subform on the same Form)
Hi, I would like to be able to use a Subform 1 Field as the Dynamic Entry Limit for Subform 2. Even better would be able to use some code with the values, so for example using the Subform 1 Qty Field as the Max Entry limit for Subform 2, BUT only theSlow Zobot response time
Hi, We launched the Zobot on our site to sit along with the regular Live Chat but had to take the Zobot down as the response time was very slow. The bot was slow to begin then once the chat had been initiated the response was very slow. The bot typinghow to show data of 3 table in pivot
Based on engineer name i want to get the data from 3 different tables like Service , amc, installation , but Every table contain Engineer name As Common , based that from the service table i want to take service amount , and count of service based onCustom Status for Purchase Orders
Currently Zoho books has functionality to create custom statuses for Sales Orders. Can this be extended to include custom status for purchase orders as well? It was a great decision to add this functionality to sales orders. Our use case is for trackingAsk the Experts 22: Scale up your customer support with integrations & extensibility
Hello everyone! The foundation is set. Build the beams. Raise the pillars. Set the walls. The Zoho Desk architecture stands tall. Let's discuss integration within Zoho Desk, extensions from the Marketplace, creating connections between Zoho Desk and otherIs there no way to duplicate an entire workflow or even custom function across multiple departments?
Is there no way to duplicate an entire workflow or even a custom function from one department to other departments, like it is done for field duplication from one department layout to other department layouts?Automated reply on any new ticket raised by customer
Hi ZohoDesk team, Can we set up an automation so that whenever a new ticket is created against our support email; ZohoDesk immediately sends our standard acknowledgement, including the expected TAT for resolution? If that’s possible, could you share theCreate Invoice With More Than One Item/Product
I was trying to use Zoho Flow to automatically create an invoice when an opportunity is marked won in Zoho CRM. However, you can only add one item/product using the Create invoice module. Is it possible to add more than one item/product to the same invoice?Zoho equipment rental - just like Booqable
Hi Zoho Team, is it possible to create a module or a system like booqable? our business starts renting our IT equipment assets that have been recently used for Events and Projects, we are having ZOHO books so its easy to integrate if you create one. BooqableProfit Margin Scheme
I'm a tourism company operating in the aviation and outbound tourism sectors. Typically, taxes are 0% as our operations are outside the country. However, the state has now imposed a tax on the profit margin. This means if the selling price of an airlineVisibility and Enforcement for Outdated Plug Parameters in Zobot Canvas
Dear Zoho SalesIQ Team, Greetings, We’d like to suggest an important usability and quality improvement for working with Plugs inside Zobot. Current Behavior: When we update the code of an existing Plug, any Zobot card using that Plug requires manual resaving.Announcement: Zoho DataPrep to Deprecate Password-Only Authentication for Snowflake Connections on July 31, 2025
As part of our ongoing commitment to security and in alignment with Snowflake's pledge to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Secure by Design initiative, Zoho DataPrep will no longer support single-factor password authentication.Text on Zoho Sign confirmation dialouge is very small compared to text used everywhere else on Zoho Sign.
I've reported multiple times through Zoho's support email that the text on this notification is very small in contrast to all the other text on the Zoho Sign app. I think it's a bug and it just needs the font size to be increased. It's very minor butError Message: None of the rows can be imported
I have been using zoho sheets to download my CSV file for about 2 years now, this month, October 2021, for some reason when I download it to upload to zoho books I get a message saying "None of the rows can be imported". I have been using the same process,Invalid Element place_of_contact, Invalid Element gst_no, Invalid Element gst_treatment
so this is the body contact_name: orderData.customerName, company_name: orderData.customerName, email: orderData.email, contact_type: 'customer', currency_code: 'INR', gst_treatment: 'business_gst', gst_no: 'i using proper gst no i just removed it fromNot able to item an item to non taxable via api, despite sending is_taxable as false
Hi everyone, I'm trying to update an item via books api and even when sending is_taxable as false, the item still shows Taxable in zoho, I get no errors as well when I update, any help appreciated in this!Collection & Payment Mapping Automation
We book Sales Invoices and Purchase Invoices against Same Projects. Both Sales Invoices & Purchase Invoices can have one or multiple Projects mentioning the Project ID. We prefer to Make vendor Payments Once we have received The Collections from ClientsNested Sub-forms (Subform within subform)
Hi Team, Whether there is any possibilities to add sub-form with in another sub-form like Main Form -> Sub form A ->Sub form B If we tried this, only one level of sub form only working. Any one having any idea about this? Thanks Selvamuthukumar RRestore Trashed Records Anytime Within 30 Days
Access the recycle bin from the Data Administration tab under the settings page in Zoho Projects, which gives better control over the trashed data. When records like projects, phases, task lists, tasks, issues, or project templates are trashed, they areAvoiding Inventory Duplication When Creating Bills for Previously Added Stock
I had created several items in Zoho Books and manually added their initial stock at the time of item creation. However, I did not record the purchase cost against those items during that process. Now, I would like to create Purchase Orders and convertApplying EUR Payments to USD Invoices in Zoho Books
Hello, I have a customer to whom I issue invoices in USD. However, this customer makes payments in both EUR and USD. I have already enabled the multi-currency feature in Zoho Books Elite, but I am facing an issue: When the customer makes a payment inHow to prevent users from editing mail merge templates from Zoho crm
We want users to use public mail merge templates. They should not be able to edit templates but only preview data merge and send emails. We did prohibit "manage mail merge template" in the user profile. But they can still edit the template in the zohoCustomer Addresses cannot be edited/deleted in invoices
In the invoices we have an option to change the customer address and add a new address Now I dont know why for some reason if we add an address through this field, the address doesn't appear in the customer module We cannot delete the addresses addedCustom Fields connected to Invoices, Customers, Quotes, CRM
I created the exact same custom fields in Books: Invoices, Customer, Quotes, and in CRM but they don't seem to have a relationship to one another. How do I connect these fields so that the data is mapped across transactions?Accelerate Github code reviews with Zoho Cliq Platform's link handlers
Code reviews are critical, and they can get buried in conversations or lost when using multiple tools. With the Cliq Platform's link handlers, let's transform shared Github pull request links into interactive, real-time code reviews on channels. ShareHeads up: We're going to update the VAT Summary table's visibility (UK and Germany Editions)
Hello users, Note: This change only applies to organisations using the UK and Germany editions of Zoho Books. Currently, if you've enabled the VAT Summary table in a template, it will be displayed only in PDFs sent to your customers whose default currencyPartial payment invoicing
Greetings I have questions related to payments and retainer invoices: 1. When I want to issue a partial payment invoice, I can't specify the portion to be paid or already paid, then balance to be shown as Due. 2. Retainer invoice is only available asInputting VAT Pre-Registration expenses for first VAT Return
Hi Zoho, I've just registered for VAT and am setting up Zoho to handle calculations and VAT return submissions. I'm struggling to figure out how to input the last 4 years worth of expenses into Zoho so that they're calculated in the VAT module. When IAnyone else experiencing very slow loading of pages in Zoho Projects?
I reported this yesterday only to be told there are no issues but is anyone else experiencing stupidly slow loading of pages. On our loading screen, it is taking often as long as 60 seconds to load a page and just stays on this screen for ages! OtherZoho Desk Lookup Field Reporting
Thank you for adding the ability to add additional lookup fields for desk tickets. My question is how do you report against these fields? For example: Associating related accounts to the primary desk ticket account, I am not able to add the lookup fieldsIntegrating asana will cause notification messages to pop up continuously
When I create or edit a task in Asana, the Asana bot keeps updating messages to group chat, which causes the cliq to keep popping up notifications.Entire notebook that had notes has disappeared
I don't know how tf this happened. All I did was uninstall and reinstall the mobile app after fixing a bug I had. After I reinstalled the app, everything was synced back except for one folder which had a bunch of notes in it. None of those notes are inMy site has disappeared from web builder
www.mproperties.uk My site above is still working. However it has completely disappeared from my Zoho sites' web builder. I am therefore unable to edit my site whatsoever. Please help.Trying to trigger email notification based on rollup summary field
Hi there, I'm trying to trigger an email notification via Workflow Rules wherever the rollup summary field "Total Shipments" goes from empty to not empty. However this field is not available from the picklist of options in the Workflow rule. Can anyoneNext Page