3 Ways for Small Business Owners to Slay the Follow-Up
Are you a business owner also struggling with lead generation? Many entrepreneurs I know tell me that they lose track of who they need to follow up with. Yet the saying is that the fortune is in the follow-up.
In honor of National Small Business Week, kicking off on May 1, let’s talk best practices. Many of us small business owners struggle with having more things to do than time in the day! Time management is one issue (if you need tips on this, head on over to the blog).
But managing follow-ups doesn’t have to be that hard - or that time-consuming. This is a really simple thing to get on top of when technology and your calendar are your friends.
Get rid of your spreadsheet or your notebook for keeping track - and boost your productivity
The key to follow-ups is to have them pop up automatically in your calendar or in your email, whichever one you check all the time. You have to treat them as important as any other business appointment. Because they are.
I was on a webinar recently where the marketing export said they’ve found that even warm leads need 9 to 11 touches before they’re ready to buy. If you’re relying on a spreadsheet or a notebook, how on earth are you going to make sure you get those 9 to 11 touches in for each prospect?
You can’t do them all in one day - imagine someone bombarding you with 9 messages in a single day! And if you’re adding them into your calendar one by one, how much time will that take you? Ugh.
(It should go without saying, but maybe it doesn’t, that those touches are not demands for them to buy your product.)
That’s why I think every single business owner, no matter what industry you’re in or what you do, needs a customer relationship management (CRM) system. Yes, it will take you a little time on the front end to enter someone in. However, you could pay a VA or an intern to upload your spreadsheet, enter in all the info you get on business cards when you go to events, etc.
In a CRM, you can keep track of your notes for a specific contact, as well as tasks. You hook up your email to the CRM (in most cases this is a pretty easy step). When you email someone from your CRM, it’s assigned to the contact, so you can look up someone and quickly see the last time you emailed them, and what you talked about.
Most CRMs also allow you to assign tasks to any notes, meetings, emails, calls, etc. At the click of a button, you automatically have a task to follow up. Depending on how you set it up, you can get a notice in your calendar or an email with all the follow-ups for the day.
CRMs also provide you with the capability to run reports. You can find out which contacts haven’t heard from you in a certain period of time, and set tasks to catch up with them, for example. Many have plenty of other features that you can use for your sales as well.
You don’t even have to pay for your CRM. I personally use Hubspot for free. It has a lot of features I don’t use, and I know some entrepreneurs don’t like to deal with software with too much extra functionality. I also think Less Annoying CRM is reasonably priced and has good functionality.
Have trouble keeping up with your notes and meetings?
Earlier I said technology and your calendar are your friends. CRM is the technology, and your calendar is how you’ll actually get stuff in there.
When it comes to productivity, there are some ways in which human brains are all alike. In others, they work differently. It’s up to you to know yourself so you can make processes work for you.
At my workshops, I talk about the importance of sleep. Getting enough is critical for every human brain. Especially if you would prefer to stave off dementia in your elder years. The notion of sleep leads directly to a discussion of sleep chronotypes, where people are different. “Bears” have different focus times compared to “lions” and so forth.
I also talk about time blocking and why it’s so important to put similar tasks together. That's true in general, but depending on you and your schedule, you might do it differently. Some business owners set aside one day a week for certain kinds of tasks, but others might set aside time each day so they get a little more variation in the day.
Ultimately, when it comes to your CRM, you need to block time off on your calendar to enter the notes that you’ve made (if any). Reflect on who you talked to or met with so you can follow up with them.
There are two ways to do this.
Daily
At the end of the day, look at your calendar and see who you talked to. This can be part of your evening ritual to help you separate work from home. Enter any pertinent info into your CRM and schedule a follow-up. This process shouldn’t take very long.
2. Weekly
At the end of the week, reflect and enter.
If you have a very busy schedule of meetings with clients and prospects, daily is better. Otherwise, you could end up with an overwhelming amount to do in one sitting, and someone will slip through the cracks.
If not, a weekly reflection could be a great way to balance the need for time blocking with making sure that you capture all the notes and tasks for everyone you met that week.
I don’t recommend blocking off time monthly. Partly because your contacts should probably hear from you sooner. But also because you won’t remember everyone and some people will slip through the cracks.
What to say in your follow-up? Well, that’s a conversation for a different day!
Recap
No matter what kind of business you have, if you’re a business owner, you need a CRM. Take time every day or week to make notes on who you talked to and schedule follow-ups. Then you don’t have to worry about accidentally ignoring an important contact.