 Hey Brett Chittum here with Lauren Systems, and this is coffee with Tom and Brett now and we're here to talk about follow-up and I Read a lot in the MSP in the IT community about people sending out quotes talking with customers and getting to a point where Why am I not closing the sale or why aren't they calling me back? And I want to ask you the question. Why aren't you following up and what do you have thoughts on Tom? There is so much for follow-up that is drives me crazy because it's one of those things of either if you don't want to do it Just tell me no, that's fine. That's still a form of follow-up saying no but that dead air really gives you a bad feeling about a company and Not that you want to be the over-pushy salesperson, but you want to be at least Responsive one of my favorite stories is the guy that we use for our signage He used to work at golf courses and I asked him Would you get into the sign business after you manage golf courses? That's kind of a weird career changer. Yeah, just following art. He had the best answer ever He says I figured I could just destroy all the competition in the area by answering the phone because I was working at a golf course and Having to contract sign companies to put signage up the courses He goes I had no consistent company and he goes all of them I had to just round Robin calling them until one of them would Properly do the follow-up and he built well He's got one hell of a sign business all because he says he answers the phone. That's his secret to success My answer in the phone is important and and yeah, but understanding that once you answer that phone What is that process to follow through with right and the follow-up process and what do you do after you close a sale? One of the things that I I tend to to remember in my early years in sales Was that if somebody called your office or called your organization? Company however you want to name that they Called because they were expecting to buy something No matter what they expected you to sell to them. Why didn't you why didn't you follow up? We send quotes out, but then we expect them to call us back I know with our process here. We send a quote out There's a follow-up and then there's another follow-up and another follow-up and when you look at my task board I have quote email quote followed up second follow-up third follow-up fourth follow-up because you need to Continually be in front of that customer to keep top of mind because you may not have been their only phone call They may have called another IT company. They may have called Three more companies to ask the same question But who wins in that scenario is the person who followed up the most follow-up is not about being pushy It's about caring for that client showing them that you truly want their business And you can even do this not just with the sales side of the process But just the follow-up after a ticket's closed or after you have some interaction with a client after a project is completed Waiting a little bit of time and putting it as a process that a note in your calendar So you have a ritual to do this just reach back out to them. Hey, how's that going? How's that thing we installed working everything's still happy? It's just it's so simple and it's amazingly effective at both client retention client close rates if you want to get projects done and The overall feeling you leave people with of like hey, they are tentative. They they didn't just sell me something They weren't annoying me to buy it after they sold it to me They actually followed up and said hey, do you still like the thing you bought from us? Yeah, they continue that conversation because of if if you want to have contracts to hold clients in place Go right ahead by how you truly hold clients in place is having that Relationship and the continued contact after the sale after an interaction with our ticket process We have our tickets that come in, you know how we follow up with those tickets after we've resolved them is important Because it's about the relationship. It's about caring and and it's not about being pushy either I'm not pushy. So sometimes I'm excitable. You've seen that time. You've had to tell me to calm down but not being pushy and and actually Having a conversation. I have always said I'm not a good salesperson I'm a good relationship person and I think that's the that's the key in your business is Building those relationships, but you do that through follow-up. It's very important to follow up on every interaction in some way shape or form Yeah, and I think the flaw a lot of technical people have and I suffer greatly from this is assuming logical behavior of people They asked me for a quote I gave him a quote. I never talked to him again because if they wanted to quote They would just call me back and use it, right? But yeah, as much as they don't want Brett to be right He's right about everything. He just said What do you mean, you know, you brought me in to be right? That's I know I did and it's because like I said with being more technical myself. This is the pride is I'm always confused Where people seem to want that love of interaction, but I forget. Oh, yeah Other people aren't exactly like me if they were like me. They probably wouldn't be hiring me And and and with when it comes to matters of the heart and matters of money people are not logical, right? They're not they're not thinking in a rational sense They're thinking into the person that's going to have that touchy-feely as much as possible And that's what that follow-up is and and really in this day and age, especially when so many things are commoditized Follow-up and showing that you are that person that is willing to do anything you can to win their business Follow-up says a lot. Absolutely Hopefully this is helpful for you. Hopefully the follow-up leads to a better sale for you and thanks for joining us Have a good one