Lesson #4: Follow-up, always follow-up!

In the fourth lesson of our “Outbound Sales for Beginners”, we are going to focus on one of the most important steps of cold emailing - following up!

A follow-up is a kind reminder email sent to a prospect that did not reply to your previous email. Persistence is one of the most important characteristics of successful sales reps. Following up with prospects will greatly increase the open rates and reply rates of cold email campaigns. Nowadays our inboxes are cluttered with unwanted emails, think about the number of emails one gets daily and how difficult it is to maintain a clean inbox. In order to be successful in sales you need to be persistent, personal and original.

Follow-up, always follow-up! Sales is a process and following up is what you need to do to move your prospects along the funnel.

Here are some of the most important guidelines to follow-ups:

• Be personal - Include personal information about your prospects, i.e. their name, job information, or any recent news. Personalisation will signal that you care and will help your emails stand out.
• Be concise and transparent - Don't spam your prospects! Keep your emails short, straight to the point and don't overpromise. Provide value with every touchpoint. It's a good practice to use the same subject line in one email cadence in order to give context to the conversation.
• Choose the right time - You want your prospects to read and reply so you should contact them when they are more likely to be looking at their inboxes. Early in the morning or late in the afternoon tend to work well.
• Do it often, up to 5-7 times -   There is a strong correlation between your open/reply rates and the number of times you follow-up. It's acceptable to do 5-7 follow-ups within a 30-day window.
• Don't take rejection personally - When doing sales you will be confronted with a lot of NO's. Don't take them personally and persevere, a lot of prospects will thank you for following up. Persistence pays off.
• Add a clear call-to-action to your emails -  A call-to-action at the end of every email will show the prospect what to do next. Make it as easy as possible for them to reply to your email. For instance, if the next step is scheduling a call, suggest possible dates.
• Always add some value - Every touchpoint is a good opportunity to add something new to your value proposition. Give an overview of your most relevant clients, share case studies. If you have a freemium model don't forget to mention it, it's a good way to improve the engagement rates.
• Be original, use humor - Humour is always a good way to engage with your prospects. People appreciate a good laugh, and you might break through the noise and get the reply you wanted. You can use a pun, a nice joke or a GIF that the prospect relates to and understands, but avoid being too sarcastic and use business-friendly images and GIFs.

Follow-ups are really important for the success of your email campaigns and can be sent up to seven times within a 30-day window after you send the first email. An efficient follow-up process will have a great impact in your conversion rates.

In the next lessons, we are going to dig into each step of the sales process. Stay tuned for the next lesson: Sales Calls and Lead Qualification

Here is the outline of this series:

1. The Sales Process  
2. Lead Generation, Prospecting  
3. Outreach, Cold emailing  
4. Follow-up, Always Follow-up!  
5. Sales Calls and Lead Qualification  
6. Closing!  
7. Deliver and Support, Customer Success  
8. Ask for Referrals! Referral Marketing!  
9. Sales hacks!  
10. Refine, Repeat, Scale!

Amplemarket Team!

If you have any questions or suggestions feel free to reach out to team@amplemarket.com. You can also follow us on Twitter and on LinkedIn.

Amplemarket is your AI-powered sales assistant. Amplemarket takes care of everything from prospecting to outreach, follow-ups, and scheduling of meetings. You tell us who you want to reach out to and wait for meetings to magically appear in your calendar.

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