Ryan Dohrn shares a follow-up system that rotates email, phone calls, handwritten notes, and small gifts every three business days. He argues buyers purchase when ready, not when pushed, and calls this approach polite persistence. His book Selling Forward donates all profits to the Golden Harvest Food Bank.
Hey friends, Ryan Dohrn here, your friendly neighborhood sales coach. And this week we're talking about polite persistence producing positive profit. What do I mean by that? Well, when you follow up with somebody, there's annoying, there's crazy annoying, and then there's polite persistence that produces positive profit. And that's what I'd like to talk about. Now, something for you to think about is being persistent is about you doing to most business owners or companies what they only wish their salespeople would do, okay? Being politely persistent and following an every 3-business-day pattern, in my opinion, is just persistent enough to move the needle, but not so persistent you're gonna make somebody crazy. So let me explain. Let's just say that we pitch business on Monday. We have a really, really great meeting. I don't think there's anything wrong with not Tuesday, not Wednesday, Thursday, 3 days later, dropping a follow-up email, dropping a card in the mail, dropping a phone call to that person. Then following that 3-day pattern, not Friday, Saturday, not Monday, not Tuesday, but the next Wednesday, every 3 business days. Now I personally like to alter between email, phone, and I like to, you know, maybe I'll send a handwritten thank you card, maybe I'll send them a book in the mail, maybe I'll send them a Sugar Wish. If you don't know what that is, go to sugarwish.com, check that out. There's all kinds of different things that you can do, but Following up for me is all about polite persistence producing positive profit. I know that's probably too much alliteration for today, but when you think about polite persistence, you've got to recognize calling somebody every day, crazy annoying, right? Calling them every couple days, probably pretty annoying as well. Every 3 business days seems to be just persistent enough to not make somebody mad, but also move the needle a little bit. But also don't forget this, people tend to buy when they're ready to buy. Not when you're ready to sell. And I think that's an important idea in sales as well. All right, get over to Amazon. We're still donating all the profits from the book Selling Forward that I wrote to the Golden Harvest Food Bank. Love for you to have a copy of that. And then also, friends, love to come to your sales meetings and motivate your team as well. Reach out to me over at ryandohrn.com. Never forget, if sales was easy, everybody'd be doing it. Okay? And they're not. We're not crazy. This is a great career, friends, that'll feed your family for a lifetime. We'll see you next week.
