Ryan Dohrn says the follow-up matters more than the pitch. Schedule the next meeting on a shared calendar before you hang up, ask how they want to be contacted, and when they go silent, send them something useful or funny instead of another sales push.
Hey friends, Ryan Dohrn here, your global sales and marketing coach, and here comes your sales training tip of the week. Control the follow-up. It's vividly important. We spend so much time on our slide decks, so much time on our presentation, yet we get to the end of the sales call and we let it fall flat. They say to us, you know, this is a great idea, great software, great solution, whatever, we need to think about it. Control the follow-up. You know, a lot of times I have my coaching clients, they'll say, Ryan, I'm getting ghosted. People aren't replying to my emails and they seemed excited about the proposal. A lot of times it's because you lost control of the follow-up. At the end of every sales call, I want to make sure that I've got a follow-up meeting set on the calendar. They see it on their phone. I see it on mine. I want to ask them specifically, if we lose touch with each other, What should I do? Should I text you, send a carrier pigeon, a smoke signal, a box of cookies? I kind of joke about it. What should I do? Be really crystal clear on something else, and that is if their answer is no, you want to hear that. It's okay if the answer is no. That's okay. Just let me know. I'm not going to try to sell you further. Any update is going to be appreciated. When you set a clear path of expectation for the follow-up, you typically don't lose people as much. Now, what do you do if you lose touch? What do you do if they ghost you? Do you stalk them? I mean, what do you do? What I typically do is try to reengage them with content. I might send them an article I found. If I came across an appropriate funny joke, I might send that as well. But just try to stay on their radar. They know why you're there, so you don't need to sell them further. Just try to stay on their radar. Hey guys, sales friends, sales is all about strategy. And strategy, a lot of that is in these little details that you need to fine-tune and tweak. to make your sales engine keep running really, really smooth. I'm Ryan Dohrn. Find out more about what I do for companies. Maybe hire me to speak at your sales conference. Listen to the podcast over at ryandohrn.com, D-O-H-R-N. And just remember, friends, if sales was easy, everybody'd be doing it. And they're not. So we're either nuts, crazy maybe, or we found careers that'll feed our families for a lifetime. All right, friends, another tip next week. Okay, like that.
