What is a Follow up calls? A Comprehensive Guide

If you are a sales representative, then you are no stranger to the rollercoaster ride of the sales journey 🎢. Of course, they face ups and downs, but there’s nothing better than turning a lead into a paying customer 💰. Yet, it is not easy to turn them into one.

Have you ever had a prospect buy your product immediately after the first call? This is where smart, steady follow up calls make all the difference.😎

Whether it’s reaching out to a cold lead, trying to revive a stalled opportunity, or moving a major enterprise deal forward. The follow up calls determine whether momentum is built or lost to close the deal.

In this blog, you’ll learn what exactly follow up calls mean and their importance in driving sales. Additionally, we will explore how to prepare for follow up calls, what to say, and share tips to help you master them. 🎯

What Is a Follow up Call?

A follow-up call in sales is the act of reaching out potential customer after an initial call. These phone calls are made after performing an initial interaction, which helps to build trust and develop a positive relationship.

Sales reps can do this through a meeting, a phone call, or follow-up emails. They can remind the prospect of a product or service, answer questions, create a sense of urgency, and move them closer to making a purchase.

You can envision follow up calls as a calling strategy to maintain engagement and clarify details. It helps to progress the interaction toward a desired outcome, ie, buying your product or service. Take it as a sales process to gently guide them toward making a favorable decision, maintaining a smooth conversation.

Why Are Follow up Sales Calls Necessary?

A follow-up sales call offers more than just reconnecting with prospects after an initial interaction. Instead, it helps to nurture relationships with prospects who may not be ready to buy immediately, significantly increasing the chances of closing a sale.

It only takes a few follow up calls to boost your conversion rate and generate revenue for the company through sales. Here’s why they should be a critical part of your sales calling strategy:

I. Create a sense of urgency

It is mostly the case that potential customers are also busy with other work and may forget about you if you don’t reach out to them periodically. They also lack assurance that they should buy the product or service, which may lead to delayed decision-making.

Follow up calls nudge them toward a decision and help overcome indecision and procrastination. They serve as reminders of the value you offer and the benefits it provides by acting sooner rather than later.

II. Build and foster relationships

Everyone loves to be cared for, and sales follow up calls do this through personalized customer interactions. Regular follow up calls help build trust with prospects by giving the opportunity to address concerns, queries, and offer additional value.

All these processes further edge the sales funnel and move them closer to a buy decision. It shows that you are genuinely caring about their needs, showing commitment and reliability.

III. Handle Potential Disapproval

It is never the case that prospects instantly like your solution and close a deal. They are likely to have objections regarding the pricing plan, features, competitors, benefits, or their own goals. Follow up calls address the pain points and give reassurance, making them more likely to convert.

It also helps by gathering their feedback and tailoring your approach to meet their needs. This information is invaluable for enhancing your sales follow-ups and improving customer interaction.

How to Make a Successful Follow-up Call for Sales?

From above, you may have been clear how follow up calls impact your business, driving sales. However, a successful follow-up call starts before you ever pick up the phone. There is a lot of prep work required, combining timing and value-driven interaction.

You can follow these steps to deliver a successful follow-up call.

1. Prepare for Follow-up Sales Calls

Sales reps should know that their initial interaction with a prospect is not a quick chat, but a treasure trove of information. You can use these details to guide your future follow up calls and be prepared to address any changes that may arise.

Always be ready to understand the prospect’s needs, and if they have shared their pain points in a previous interaction. Also, be prepared with a stronger, clearer response if they had objections you didn’t fully answer. You can offer a solution that fits their needs by using this information.

Ultimately, these processes make follow up calls successful by sounding more trustworthy and increasing your chances of closing the deal.

2. Fix an Ideal Time for Your Calls

If you make a call and your prospect doesn’t receive it, then it denies the chances of reaching them and building a relationship. So, it is necessary to choose a time that proves ideal for both to have a productive conversation. It is crucial to pick a time zone when they are less busy, respecting their schedule.

To make them receive your phone calls, never push a time that might be inconvenient for them. Instead, you can send a reminder email before performing a follow-up call to your prospects. This helps confirm their availability and reminds them of what you’ll be discussing.

3. Start with a Call Summary

There are likely chances that your prospect may have forgotten what they talked about in a previous interaction. It is always helpful to provide a personalized recap before diving into the details. This helps to re-establish context and shows you’re attentive to their needs, setting a positive tone for the discussion.

Additionally, it also gives them a chance to clear up any questions or concerns they might have. By providing a call summary, you build trust, refresh their memory, and set a clear agenda.

4. Addressing Objections

Handling objections during sales calls is crucial, as it directly impacts the success or failure of a sales call. If objections are ignored or mishandled, prospects may lose confidence and turn to competitors instead. It could be any queries about product features, pricing, and competitors.

As potential customers move closer to making a purchase, they focus more on cost before making a decision. If you effectively address these types of objections, you can turn these challenges into opportunities.

For example, a pricing issues often involve concerns about cost, value, or return on investment (ROI). If you expect these concerns, you can plan your response to the queries. Sales reps can suggest flexible pricing options, offer different packages, or share a successful customer story featuring your product.

5. Ask Relevant Questions

To have a successful sales follow-up call, you need to know what to discuss and engage the prospect to gain valuable insights. One of the key factors in achieving this is asking relevant questions. It helps to uncover their true needs, pain points, and challenges, allowing you to tailor your pitch accordingly.

Additionally, you can achieve streamline interaction and the prospect’s active participation in a discussion through well-structured questions. Here is the list of types of relevant questions to ask:

Open-ended Questions: They encourage the prospect to provide a detailed response.

• Example: “Can you tell me more about the challenges you’re facing with your current solution?”

Clarifying Questions: It helps to ensure that you understand their needs clearly.

• Example: “When you say you need faster turnaround times, what specific deadlines are you aiming to meet?”

Need-Based Questions: They focus on what prospects want to achieve 

• Example: “What are the top priorities for your team this quarter?”

Hypothetical Questions: It gives prospects visualize positive outcomes and the value your product can deliver.

• Example: “If you had access to [product feature], how do you think it would impact your team productivity?”

6. Add a Precise Call to Action(CTA)

A clear call to action is crucial in guiding your prospect toward the next step in the sales process. Without a clear CTA, your follow up calls are pointless, leaving the prospect unsure of what to do next. It transforms your follow up calls from casual interaction into a purposeful step toward closing the sale.

Let’s have a look at why a well-defined CTA is essential for the sales process:

• Provides Direction: It tells the prospect exactly what you want them to do next, reducing confusion.
• Maintains Momentum: Keeps the sales process moving forward and prevents leads from going cold.
• Sets Expectations: It helps to clarify timelines and responsibilities for both you and the prospect.
• Increases Commitment: When prospects agree to a specific action, they are more likely to stay, streamlining communication.

Moreover, you can achieve an effective call to action by being specific about what you want the prospect to do. For example, “Could we schedule a follow-up call for next Wednesday at 5 p.m. to discuss [topic]?” By doing so, it has added a sense of urgency that will prompt them to make quick decisions.

Ensure your CTA doesn’t overwhelm them and achieve this by keeping it relevant and concise.

Must-Know Tips for Better Sales Follow up Calls: An Ultimate Guide

Sales reps or any other individual should perform effective sales follow up calls to nurture leads, build trust, and close the deal. It helps you transform casual conversation into a purposeful approach to guide prospects to make a purchase. Let’s have a look at the tips to execute better sales follow up calls.

A. Set the Date and Time

To lay the foundation for a productive conversation, setting a date and time is a crucial first step. It helps to avoid randomly reaching out to prospects and creates a professional tone to have a well-structured engagement.

Unexpected or cold calls are often ignored. But when a call is scheduled, the prospect is expecting it. It also offers time to prepare for follow-up, as both know when the call will happen.

B. Send a Reminder Email

In today’s day-to-day life, individuals are engaged in numerous activities, and follow-up is not the only thing they prioritize. You can send a reminder email instead to ensure it remains on your mind and reduce the chances of not showing up. It also shows professionalism and punctuality towards prospects.

When sending an email reminder, include details such as the date, time, and purpose of the follow-up call. To have a productive conversation, you can also send valuable resources that are relevant to the call. It can be an e-book, a presentation, or a blog related to the service the prospect is looking for.

Additionally, most email platforms offer calendar integration. It enables you to send an email reminder with a calendar invitation, allowing your prospect to easily add the call to their schedule for a gentle reminder.

C. Highlight Key Points in Your Follow-up Call

A follow-up call is a doorway to direct potential customers to closing the deal. To do this, you need to grab their attention from the start through a thoughtful question or personalized greeting. Avoid the boring, “I am calling you to follow up on…”

Moreover, remind them of your previous interaction to set the context and clarify the purpose of your call. By the end of the call, involve them in discussing the next steps to keep them engaged and informed. It can be handling specific concerns, scheduling a demo, or finalizing pricing details.

Always strive to be clear and specific, using real examples or data to support your claims. This helps build trust and provides an opportunity to move the prospect further down the sales funnel.

D. Maintain Persistence, Patience, and Politeness

A balanced approach that combines persistence, patience, and politeness helps to execute a successful follow-up. Mastering this trio can significantly enhance your chances of building a connection and closing deals. Persistent refers to staying consistent with your follow-up efforts, even if it takes several tries.

Continue to reach out while maintaining a respectful and thoughtful approach. While the potential customer doesn’t make the decision right away and here patience comes into play. Give them the time and space they need to decide without pressure. Lastly, always stay polite.

Pushy tactics can damage the relationship and leave a bad impression. If you behave politely, even if they don’t close the deal instantly, they’ll be more likely to remember you for future deals. The 3 Ps—Persistence, Patience, and Politeness—are essential when the B2B sales cycle can be lengthy.

E. Send an Email With the Call Summary

If you send an email with a call summary, it helps to document the progress made in the conversation. It ensures both you and the likely customers are aligned on what was covered and agreed upon. Always prepare a concise and organized call summary email, including major points and deadlines.

Why Use Sales Call Recording Software for Follow Up Calls?

Sales call recording software is used for call recording and store conversations with potential customers. This feature allows you to review your follow-up calls in detail. Being able to look back helps identify areas that need improvement in communication and pinpoint areas of strength.

These software applications help you record, transcribe, and analyze your conversations instantly. It allows you to quickly review the interaction and identify the key aspects of each call. With a good sales call recording software, you can perform various tasks such as:

Get breakdowns of conversations

With the software’s transcribe feature, you drop the need to listen to the entire recording as it automatically transcribes all calls within minutes. You can filter out the key points or make notes from the transcript to know what happened during the call.

Records of Questions

A reliable software automatically records all questions asked during the call separately. It saves sales reps time by allowing them to skip through a whole transcript if they only want to know the issues the prospect had. The organization can list out objections to provide sales training to individuals as well.

Sentiment analysis

The software application records all positive and negative emotions picked up during the call. Sentiment analysis makes it easy to determine the various reactions of the prospect. It ultimately assists in knowing the likely customer’s intent and prepares for future follow-up accordingly.

Access action items

The software program offers the feature to efficiently record the “next steps” discussed during the call. It makes it easy to refer back to them for timely and relevant follow-ups. This way, likely customers don’t lose track of the context and can engage in a productive conversation.

Conclusion

Follow-up sales calls are the essential component of a successful sales strategy. It acts as a bridge between initial contact and closing the deal, nudging the prospect to purchase. They are necessary to build trust, foster relationships, address objections, and keep your product top of mind for prospects.

It is essential to prepare thoroughly, schedule calls at convenient times, and always end with a clear call to action to perform successful follow-up.

FAQs

How soon should you follow up after a sales call?

The follow-up timing depends on the prospect’s schedule and the sales process you follow. In general, a follow-up call within 24 to 48 hours after the initial call is a good practice.

How often should I follow up with a prospect?

It is good to follow up persistently but respectfully. Most sales need multiple follow-ups (often 5–8 touches), but always space them out based on the prospect’s responses to avoid being pushy.

How do I prepare for a follow-up sales call?

For a more effective follow-up, review notes from previous interactions, understand potential customers’ needs and pain points, and be prepared to address any objections.

What types of questions should I ask on a follow-up call?

It is better to use a mix of open-ended, clarifying, need-based, and hypothetical questions to better understand the prospect’s needs, challenges, and decision-making process.

What to say in a follow-up sales call?

When making a follow-up sales call, you should:

• Open the interaction with a friendly greeting or attention attention-grabbing sentence.
• Give a quick recap of what was discussed in the last call.
• Share the intent of making a follow-up call.
• Speak of the agenda and address objections.
• Discuss the next steps and conclude with a clear call to action (CTA).