Sales Follow Up Statistics You Need To Know

Sit back and just imagine for a moment just how easier your role as a salesperson would be if you could ask for the sale and they said yes every time on the first meeting.

Hello! Come back to reality now! It’s a dream.

Sales follow up statistics

Did you know that only 2% of sales close at the first meeting?

This leaves a whopping 98% of sales that require follow up.

That actually makes sense when you think about it. The prospect needs to get to know you and you, them. They need to trust you and absorb all of the information that you are discussing.

Here’s another interesting piece of research from Scripted. Did you know that it takes an additional 5 follow ups to close 80% of the remaining deals? So that could be additional meetings, telephone calls, email communications, social messages or a combination of all of them.

Why you need a “5 NO” sales follow up process and policy

How many sales follow ups do you make before you give up?

Research from Scripted suggests that 44% of sales people give up after the first attempt. Hubspot states that on average the number of follow ups is 2.

This is good news for those of you that do follow up and have a system of doing so. Even if your product is not the best on the marketplace, the fact that you are following up means that you’re in the game to begin with by selling to prospects that are ignored by the rest.

Therefore, based on the research if you are giving up without at least attempting 5 follow ups then you are leaving a lot of money on the table.

I recommend that at the very least you have a “5 NO” policy.

What I mean by this is that you follow up at least 5 times. After the 5^th attempt you should take them out of your sales funnel and put them into a nurture programme if you have heard nothing. Maybe add them to an automatic email sequence sent from you for the next couple of weeks. You could send the prospect some useful thought leader content or some relevant articles from your company blog. You’ll have nothing to lose.