Follow-ups Are Like Investing In Your 401k!

The night before RainMaker 2015 in Atlanta, put on by SalesLoft, I was talking to Kevin O’Malley, VP Marketing & Sales Development at Catavolt (aka: Mobilizer), and as a power user of Advanced Sales Acceleration technology from ConnectAndSell shared an interesting analogy with me–that “follow-ups are like investing in your 401k“.

Brilliant!  He went on to share what happened when his Reps go from having 2-3 conversations/day to 20 – 30/day.  He shared that a lot of the time, prospects could just blow them off.  The typical “you caught me at a bad time” response. However, he also shared that a percentage of the time, the prospect will take a meeting on the first attempt.

The parallel to investing in a 401k?  Prospects feel guilty when you catch them at a bad time the first time, then catch them again, and they appreciate the persistence.  It’s like investing $75/month in your 401k.  At the end of 3 months, you only have $225 (plus interest).  Over time, the investment grows – just like investing in your follow-ups.  Craig Rosenberg, Founder of TOPO (Twitter: @funnelholic) recently published a study that best in class companies call their leads 42 times!  NOT a 3 touch strategy, or 5 touch, or 7 touch – 42 touches!  That’s investing in your follow-ups!

Kevin said that when asked “What would you do if your CFO told you that you could no longer use Advanced Sales Acceleration Technology?”  ANSWER: “My Reps would hate me, and we couldn’t do our job”.

If you aren’t using ConnectAndSell, check out the online demonstration, sign up for a 1 hour “ride the roller coaster” experience with one of our experts.  You’ll see how investing in your Follow-ups are like investing in your 401k!