48% of sales people never follow up with a prospect
25% of sales people make a second contact and stop
12% of sales people make more than three contacts

2% of sales are made on the first contact
3% of sales are made on the second contact
5% of sales are made on the third contact
10% of sales are made on the fourth contact
80% of sales are made on the fifth to twelfth contact

Creating and using a follow up system is a guaranteed way to grow your business.  In fact with less than 52% of all sales people following up with their prospects you will not only grow your business but you will stand out amongst your peers.  And remember 80% of sales are made in the fifth to twelfth contact if you are in a market with heavy competition you literally eliminate your competitors by simply following up.

To learn more about creating a follow up system make sure you to read Creating a Follow Up Strategy where I discuss follow up strategies for existing customers.

Related posts:

1. Of Course I have a Referral and Follow Up System!
2. Creating Great Follow Up With Your Clients in 7 Simple Steps
3. Attracting New Customers and Increasing Your Referrals this Year!

There are many ways to follow up with your prospects and one of my favorites is through gratitude and appreciation.  Before dialing, emailing or writing a note take a moment to think about your prospect and your last meeting.  Is there something you discussed in your last meeting that gave you an idea or helped you in some way?  Did you learn something new about how your product or service can help a future prospect or customer?  Did your prospect possibly give you a referral or a lead?  These are all great examples of how you can follow up with gratitude.

Think about the last time someone expressed gratitude or appreciation towards you.  Was it in person, on the phone, via email, or maybe you received an unexpected thank you card?  Think about how this small act of gratitude made you feel.  This is the same feeling you create with your prospects when you appreciate them.  This feeling creates a stronger relationship with your prospect.  By building on your relationship you are attracting your prospect to convert themselves to the sale or another referral.

Try out following up with gratitude after your next few presentations and let me know how it worked for you.  If you currently do this in your follow up process leave a comment and tell me how it is working for you.

Related posts:

1. Send Thanksgiving Cards to Follow Up With Your Clients!
2. Of Course I have a Referral and Follow Up System!
3. Sending Holiday Cards to Your Customers is a Waste of Time!

And now you find yourself exactly where you don’t want to be, 15 days before the big holiday, no holiday greeting cards in the mail.  You have a decision to make…  Do you stop everything and send those holiday cards out or do you just forget about it?

The answer? STOP EVERYTHING AND GET IT DONE NOW! This may seem a bit crazy or even bias because you know I am a big SendOutCards user and often promote using SendOutCards on Follow Up Success.  Card sending is an important step in your follow up process and holiday card sending is almost at the top.

Here are my top three reasons why you should stop everything and send out your holiday greeting cards now:

1. Appreciating your customers and prospects – Every single one of your customers enjoys being appreciated and the holidays is a great time to say thank you for the past business you have received.  Prospects can easily be turned into customers by simply saying thank you for learning more about you and your business while wishing for them a great holiday with family and friends.
2. Reestablishing the business relationship – One of my goals for 2010 is to create stronger relationships with my customers and prospects.  By sending holiday cards I will reestablish past relationships that I may have let slip through the cracks.  This is important when you reach out to past customers or prospects in the New Year as you will have recent contact.
3. Top of Mind Awareness – This is the big one!  Creating top of mind awareness with your customers and prospects when they are surrounded by their closest friends and family is an essential step in your follow up and referral strategy.  If you are top of mind with your customer or prospect they are more likely to bring you and your business up in conversation or think about you for a potential referral.

Hopefully I have encouraged you to take action!  Maybe, you have already picked up that box of holiday cards from your desk or floor and have starting filling them out.  Possibly, you have too many cards to send and feel hopeless!  If you are feeling hopeless SendOutCards would be the best gift to give yourself this holiday season!  With my help within a few hours you can have all of your holiday cards in the mail each personalized with your message.  To learn more about SendOutCards or to set up your account visit my Follow Up Tools page or contact me.  I am more than happy to help you through this process!

Whether you use SendOutCards, go buy cards from the store, or use the cards you already have, just get it done!  Stop everything and do this now!  I promise you it’s worth the time.

Do you have great business success stories from sending cards?  Please tell us all about it by leaving a comment!

Related posts:

1. Increase Referrals and Attract More Clients by Sending Holiday Cards
2. Do You Still Need to Send Your Holiday Cards?
3. Holiday Follow Up: Greeting Cards, Postcards, and E-cards

With your email list you have the ability to:

• Follow up with past customers
• Announce new product releases
• Educate past and current customers
• Continue to market additional products and services
• Share success stories with your product or service
• Maintain top of mind awareness
• Create additional referral opportunities

Now is the time to start creating a list for your business.  There are many options available when deciding which email service to use for your list.  I use and recommend both AWeber and iContact with my websites.  These are two great companies to use and are pretty similar.  Look into each of them and decide which one will work best for you or opt into the form below and learn more about how AWeber might work for your business:

AWeber just made it really easy to create great looking newsletter opt in forms for your website or blog!  Released just in the past few weeks you can now go to your AWeber account and create a new form using one of the many templates available.  Choose from many great categories like automotive, corporate, retail, money, real estate, and more.  Learn more about the AWeber options by visiting Shawn Collins Affiliate Marketing Blog.

Watch this video to learn how you can create a new form from your existing AWeber account:

You will need to set up your AWeber account to use the form generator but I promise it will be worth it!

Related posts:

1. Creating Great Follow Up With Your Clients in 7 Simple Steps
2. Creating a Follow Up Strategy
3. Two Simple Follow Up Strategies for Speakers and Presenters

One of my favorite opportunities to reach out to existing customers and create stronger relationships is Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving after all is all about gratitude and what better way to show gratitude to your customers than by sending them a Thanksgiving card and letting them know how much you appreciate their business?

I truly believe in sending Thanksgiving cards to follow up with your customers and prospects. In fact I have recent memories of handwriting over 500 Thanksgiving cards to my clients not too long ago. This was a huge and exhausting task with each card containing two or three lines of personalized text. I spent well over two months completing this process! And while I was all gung-ho to send out holiday greeting cards to my clients as well… It was just not going to happen. I had all the holiday cards on my desk but could not get them completed in the two remaining weeks I had left. At the time I remember thinking there must be a better to get this done… Of course there is a better way and I discovered it about six months later. The next time I mailed Thanksgiving cards to my clients I sent 600 and did them all in about four hours instead of two months! I used an incredible system called SendOutCards and you can learn more about this process by visiting my Follow Up Tools page.

There are many reasons to send out Thanksgiving cards to your clients, prospects, and referral sources. The main one being appreciation. Everyone likes to be acknowledged and appreciated and when you do this your clients will do more business with you, prospects will start doing business with you, and your referral sources will send you even more referrals.

Now is the time! Start following up with your customers and prospects today with Thanksgiving cards!

Related posts:

1. Increase Referrals and Attract More Clients by Sending Holiday Cards
2. Sending Holiday Cards to Your Customers is a Waste of Time!
3. Do You Still Need to Send Your Holiday Cards?