When it comes to maintaining a funnel, the average salesperson is only following up 1.3 times.

But, if you follow up six times, instead of just 1.3 times, you increase the likelihood of getting that prospect on the phone to nearly 90%. So if you’re looking for a way to stand out from the competition, even if you might have the experience or chops of some veteran salespeople, follow up is the key to blowing up overnight.

So here are some tactics to structure your outreach so it’s scalable and systematic.

You need to respond to an incoming lead as quickly as possible. On average, it takes nearly two days for most salespeople to reach out to a new lead, but by that time the prospect is most likely in a totally different frame of mind, and might not even remember how they provided you with their information. You want to reach out as quickly as possible, preferably within two minutes. It only makes sense to capture their attention when they are thinking about your product or service. You need speed to the lead.

Just because you get in touch with someone does not mean you’ll be able to close them. That is where the follow up comes in. While there is a ton of survey data that points to different statistics. In our own business here at ReminderMedia, it takes us an average of 11 to 13 calls to close a qualified internet lead.

Salespeople spend too much time searching for leads that are ready to buy, they step over tons of qualified prospects to try and get one hot lead. This is a mistake, because if you refine the top of your funnel, you will eventually cultivate and unbreakable pipeline that will result in a steady stream of hot leads that you warmed up through nurturing.

So how do you nurture a qualified prospect that might not be ready to buy? You need to give them valuable content that is still business minded. Then you go back and analyze the way they interacted with certain kinds of content and use that data to make a determination about working them further through your funnel.

But it all starts when you first get the lead, you want to call them within 5 minutes. Then you leave them a voicemail and shoot them an e-mail. Two hours later you want to call them again. Then brace yourself for having to do it again and again to get them on the phone. Build it from that first day into a six-touch plan, since this so heavily increases the likelihood of getting them on the phone.

After you start nurturing, you need to develop some kind of schedule for your outreach. We can’t give you the magical formula, because we are still trying to figure it out. One schedule we always recommend to our clients is the 8×8, where you  hit a prospect 8 times over 8 weeks with valuable content coupled with strong CTAs. The schedule content would look like this:

Week 1: Letter

Week 2: Recipe Card/Inspirational Card

Week 3: Real Estate Newsletter

Week 4: Telephone Call

Week 5: American Lifestyle magazine as a pop-by

Week 6: Home maintenance seasonal guide

Week 7: Real Estate news/resource

Week 8: Phone Call

So sit down, and write down an outreach schedule for one week, and stick to that schedule and meticulously track all the results. And to keep you motivated, print out the NEED FOR SPEED POSTER for your office or cubicle by clicking the button below.