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As a young Sales Manager of a Fortune 500 Company, Sellaboo Founder, Terry Wilson learned very early of the importance and many benefits of customer follow-up.
Terry says "when I first hired on, the company as a whole only hit about 58% of goal. My particular team did a bit better at about 78% of goal. Within about 6 months of starting, the company started a big push for what we called an “ACV” or “Appointment Continuation Visit”.
Although this was not a new concept for the company, it had never been a major focus or requirement. Basically, as the name suggests, the company wanted the sales reps to continue to keep in touch with or “follow-up” with each and every customer AFTER the initial contact or appointment with each customer.
At first, there was a lot of resistance with this follow-up initiative as many think that the biggest sales opportunity is in the initial appointment and if the sale wasn’t made...it was time to move on to the next opportunity or prospect.
I soon became this biggest fan of this “follow-up” initiative.
Luckily as a young manager, I had the attitude that someone will always know more than me so I should be open to learning and giving things a chance to prove themselves. Thinking that there is obviously some reason the company wanted this so bad, I jumped on the “proverbial bandwagon” and went ALL-IN on asking my team to “follow-up” with each and every customer.
The success we saw was record breaking and we as a team went from a very average of 78% of goal to a record breaking 128% of plan and became the #1 sales team out of over 300 teams company wide. The many things my team and I gained from this initiative was beyond amazing and almost unbelievable. Not only did each member of my team see a great increase in income because of seeing their share of the success, the business as a whole won in many ways as well, some of which were still being seen in the years to come.
Just to name a few of the many benefits, our team saw an increase of 33% more referrals given by current customers which also led to an additional 42% revenue as many of those referrals also turned in to closed sales.
In addition to more referrals, we saw as a team, an increase of over 9 CSI (Customer Service Index) points. This KPI meant a lot to a lot of different areas as not only did the company award bonuses based on the sales reps CSI, the individual location saw lift in customer loyalty and return customers that grew to an increase of 9% market share over the next 2-5 years.
We as a team saw a decrease in turnover. Prior to implementing this initiative, this location had experienced almost 100% annual turnover with only 1 sales rep having been there for more than a year. After implementing this initiative, we went 3 years without losing one team member. This in and of itself was a huge accomplishment and as a business owner, you already know the high cost and challenges of high turnover.
My team also knew that a big reason for their success was that we religiously performed our customer follow-up program and continued this success for the next 3 years until I was promoted from a Sales Manager responsible for one location to a Territory Sales Director over the Western United States and 70 of the companies locations. Although excited for the new opportunity, my eyes were about to be opened as the success I had enjoyed was about to be tested.
As it turned out, many of my new locations were struggling and not only performing very poorly I would soon find out that something would give these locations some immediate lift. Visits with local Sales Managers and analysis of the business quickly told me of what was being done and not being done and I knew right away what I recommended and wanted to implement...the Customer Follow-Up Program!
Immediately, we scheduled training and accountability measures for these teams and the expectation of 100% of laid out to the local teams, employees and support staff so as to get the biggest results possible. As rolling out a big initiative on a big scale can take a bit of time, the results took a little longer and there was some resistance from the “non-believers” but the results were big and very similar to the ones we experienced at my first location.
As expected, not everyone is going to get on board with company initiatives and expectations and such was the case with our Customer Follow-Up Program. In our experience, approximately 38% of our Sales Reps, for whatever reasons, did not do their Follow-Ups and also as expected, did not enjoy the additional income and other benefits others enjoyed.
Although this was not ideal and we would have rather seen them participate and succeed, we were not willing to just relinquish to them and let their Customer Follow-Up go unperformed as we knew what the business gained by doing them. In these cases, we “re-assigned” the Follow-Up to other Sales Reps who knew of their value and benefit. This was a win/win for both the Company and the Employee and we saw huge lift from this discovery.
THE BIRTH OF SELLABOO! As luck would have it, after working with this Company for just over 10 years, the Company did some territory realignment, my territory was merged with another and I was laid off. With a beautiful family of a wife and 5 children to support, this was obviously a very difficult time to be out of work and I made the decision to be more in control of my income so I set out to start my own business.
For me, the “what type of business do I started” decision was an easy one as I already knew a problem I could provide a solution to.
Most businesses rely HEAVILY on Customer Follow-Up and most don’t close their sales on the first appointment. Having many of my Sphere and Network in sales in many different industries and interviewing many of them, I confirmed that my previous industry was like most industries where the need for Customer Follow-Up was a dire need and completely untouched. Thus, Sellaboo was born.
BOTTOM LINE...your business deserves the many benefits that come from Customer Follow-Up so in order to make sure you get them...do the Follow-up for your business.
CONCLUSION: There is more revenue and other benefits potential POST initial appointment than there are during the initial appointment. The average business where consistent, complete and true follow-up is performed experience enormous growth as they realize revenue and income that was before missed.
Giving you results while they're still on your customers mind, Sellaboo's unique customer follow-up platform gives you results so accurate you can adjust, pivot and improve your performance.
Sellaboo's specialized Customer Nurture has completely changed our business. Sales are up, referrals are up, customer satisfaction is up. It's all up. We're using it across 4 locations and in my opinion, EVERY business should implement these campaigns into their business, it's that good." Todd Schaeffer, State Farm