Part 4 in our Art of the Sale blog series is follow up. Follow up is a crucial part in your sales process. In Part 3, we discussed how to present your company to a prospect and attempt to close a deal. You won’t always get the “yes” right away, on the first phone call. You’ll need a follow up strategy to keep your prospect interested and engaged with your property management company.
Follow up is a way to show the prospect that you care. If you can do that, you’ll win more often. There are three important elements that you must include in your follow up strategy:
Send an Email
The first part is easy to do. You simply have to follow up with email. Do this after every phone conversation, even if you left a voicemail. The email can be simple, thanking the prospect for the time or expressing regret that you missed him. Send an email note asking for a time to speak.
Do the Work
As a salesperson, the work needs to come from you. It’s your job to make it easy for a prospect to say “yes.” At the end of each email, move to the next step by asking for the prospect’s availability. Suggest something specific. For example, your email might end with: “would Wednesday at 2pm be a good time to connect for 10 minutes?” Make it simple to say yes.
Contextual, Content-Based Follow Up
This advanced follow up strategy can increase your closing rate by at least 30 percent. It’s called contextual content-based follow up, and here’s how it works.
Many of our clients, and a lot of other property managers have acted on their content marketing plan – hopefully, you have, as well. You’ll have created videos and articles on how to do things when you’re a landlord or a property investor. These blogs help you answer a customer’s questions. You might have content on rental market forecasts in your area, advice on putting together a pet policy, tips on how to have a smooth move out transition and other timely, relevant topics for people looking for property management help. When you have blogs with an article and a video that you can send to your prospect, it’s a perfect opportunity to distinguish yourself from your competition.
Go to your blog on your website or on your company’s blog site. Find the article you want to send. For example, if you want to send your prospect the blog on the 2015 rental market update, go into the article itself and copy the URL above it. Insert that link by copying and pasting it into your email. Identify who you are in the subject line, then reference in the email that it’s a good time to be a landlord, and paste the link with the article.
How relevant is this information to a prospect? It’s extremely relevant and extremely valuable. When you get off the phone and then immediately send information that’s hard to get, you’re going to have a much better chance of closing the deal. At the end of the email, of course you’ll propose a specific time to set your next call.
We hope sharing this information on how to follow up with your prospects was helpful. If you have any questions about the follow up process or anything we’ve discussed in our Art of the Sale series, please contact us at Fourandhalf.
