I received a great question last week from a sales rep for a small business the other day:
If a lead gives a verbal commitment to buy, e.g. “Yeah loved the product, I’ll definitely place an order later tonight”, then does not. What is the best way to give them a friendly reminder and how long should I wait to do so?
Your question is GREAT and super common- almost all my clients deal with this issue (we all do!). I would suggest setting a system in place and depending on how frequently this happens, have a template email ready to go that you either automate or do weekly. There’s a few options to follow up…
1. The next day. Sending a quick note that doesn’t talk about their order not placed (people do get busy) but a quick “Hey Joe, it was so nice to chat with you yesterday! If you have any questions about My Awesome Company or need any help getting your order placed please don’t hesitate to contact me.” simple, gets your name in their inbox and may be that something just popped up. This also gives them a chance to respond and say they had a change of plans or something came up and they’re on it.
2. End/beginning of the week. Set a weekly time to send out a “reminder” email to anyone who hasn’t placed their order yet- this would be if you have a lot of folks on a weekly basis who verbally commit but don’t follow through. I’d write something similar to the first email with a bit more info: “Happy Friday from My Awesome Company! I know when we spoke earlier this week you were planning to place an order on our site. I haven’t seen it come through yet and I just wanted to check in to see if you need help getting the order placed or have any questions/need anything from me.” Again, it reminds them you noticed they didn’t come through yet, but gives them the out and a chance to respond “your ordering system sucks, do it yourself” or “got busy” those kinds of things.
3. Individual a week out – If you aren’t coming across this problem in a large quantity then I’d say about a week after you had the call do the follow up. Again, something super simple and not nagging. I’d lean closer to the language in #2 than #1, but “great to talk with you last week, if you have questions…I noticed your order hasn’t been placed, if I can help please lt me know”
These are three templated follow up email types that I’ve done for my own business throughout time, and it at the least gets your name in their inbox again. If your company has a newsletter you might also want to get them signed up for that so they have something regularly coming into their inbox from you guys to remind them how awesome you are!
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