Is it time to follow up with your undecided leads?

Follow up phone call with leads

Your prospects have options.  They can choose you, choose your competitor, or choose to do nothing.  If your last conversation with a prospect ended with “let me think about it” and is followed by no responses to your emails or voice-mails, you might think the lead is dead.  But is it?

You don’t know.  Maybe something changed and a decision was delayed.  Maybe a decision was made but isn’t going so well.  Maybe your contact left the company and nobody picked up the project.  Maybe your contact is stuck in a paralysis by analysis situation and can’t make a decision.  If you don’t follow up with that lead, you won’t know.

After a period of time, it’s worth your effort to follow up.  It doesn’t have to be complicated of time consuming.  I’ve seen a client send out a short email simply asking if they’d made a decision.  It was one line that reopened conversations with a few of his cold leads.  The minimal time and effort of that follow up email more than paid for itself.  It’s an easy way to get someone back on your hot prospect list. 

B2B GameDay tips to follow up with your undecided leads:

  1. Start with identifying the leads that you thought had a high probability of success but went cold for no obvious reason. If you don’t have a way to easily find these leads for the follow up, think about customizing your CRM to track things like conversion/ success probability, outcome (competitor, undecided, unsure), etc.
  2. Give them some time. If they did go with your competitor, you want them to be just far enough into things to start to see weaknesses or a poor fit.  If they are in the same spot as when you originally spoke to them, your outreach will be a reminder of why they went in search of a change in the first place.
  3. Keep your email simple. The client I mentioned used a simple one-liner. “I’m touching base to see if you’re still in need of (fill in your product or service here).”  This is to the point and perfectly clear what you’re asking the person to do.
  4. Send the email from the salesperson they interacted with originally.
  5. Consider a phone call instead of email. I think sales calls are underused today, so you’ll differentiate yourself.
  6. Add automation in your CRM to either send this email automatically for you, or to assign the follow-up for your sales team.

It’s easier and less expensive to restart a conversation with someone who already knows you than to generate leads from cold outreach.  Don’t let a good prospect simply disappear.  Follow up with those undecided leads.  You might reignite interest or, at a minimum, be able to confidently close the lead as lost.

Marketing success is driven by touchpoints like this one.

Marketing success is driven by touchpoints like this one.

If you want to discuss how best to reach your prospects, let’s talk.

Carla Trobak blog

About the Author: Carla Trobak 

Carla is a B2B Marketer and Partner at Bench Strength Marketing.  She sees the big picture and loves to get her hands into the details.