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[E84] Q&A Week: Is it fair to get fired for not following up on leads?
From a business
perspective this one is an easy answer.
From a professional salesperson’s perspective this one is an easy answer.
An
unprofessional salesperson will debate this one.
Today’s
episode, I address “I was fired from a sales job today for letting a week go
without following up on a lead. Is that fair?”
Episode 84 – Transcript
Welcome to episode 84 of the
sales experience podcast.
Today I’m gonna answer a
question that I’ve seen online. I’ve seen it in real life before. I’ve never
had somebody ask it, but I’ve been involved with situations where this is kind
of the premise behind it and hopefully you’re enjoying all these episodes. If
you haven’t yet, make sure you subscribe to the podcast.
Again, iTunes, Stitcher, Sound
cloud, Spotify, you can find it everywhere. Cutter Consulting, group.com
website. You can find them there. You can find a link there for listening to it
in any location you want. Can also find full transcripts of every episode on
there.
So if you listen to it and
you’re like, hey, that was great, but I didn’t have a chance to take a note.
Always go to the cutter consulting group.com site slash podcast you can find
every episode there, all of the transcripts you can find what you need, copy
and paste.
Use it in your sales career,
in your sales, like with your sales team as an owner of a company. You know,
take all these bits. That’s why I do this. So that you can have this valuable
information and not just hear it like a shelf help book where you hear it or
you read it sounded great. You put it on the shelf, you never see it again
until you have to move.
The goal of this and what I
do is for you to put these things in actions. Why I try to keep these episodes
under 10 minutes so you can listen to a digest, take action on it, put it in
place, next episode the following day. Put that in action and just layer on all
these little bits over time in order to change the sales experience for you and
your customers. All right, today’s question.
I was fired from a sales job
today for letting a week go by without following up on a lead. Is that fair?
Now, other situations I’ve seen like this is where I’ve had to let reps go or I
have advised managers and companies to let somebody go who’s literally not
following up on their leads and they’re not putting in the action.
Now, why is this a big deal?
Sales Reps, hopefully it doesn’t apply to you if you’re listening to this, but
just in case it does. The reason why this is so important is that sales reps
need to follow up on their leads.
Fundamentally, no matter what
you’re selling, there’s a good chance that it’s never a one call close 100% of
the time. Now, of course the goal is probably to close deals in one call as
much as possible, but there’s usually a ideal percentage for every industry.
Now if you’re in something
like mortgage, it’s never a one call close. However, a one call close to you
may be getting the information you need to pull a credit report to prequalify
somebody, so that may be considered your one called close.
Instead of having multiple
calls in order to even get to that point where you’re getting a social or
they’re filling out information online or they’re filling out your basic 10 oh
three so you can get done what you need.
Other industries, it may be
more of a chance of a one call close or that may look different, including
payment information and you know, getting the three digit number on the back of
their credit card or whatever that may be for you. In every industry there’s
some type of one call close and there’s a percentage that you should be
shooting for.
That usually is not 100% the
reason why is there’s always gonna be prospects who ae need more time there in
a personality type, let’s say like analysts where they’re not necessarily going
to make one call close buying decisions.
The other part is that
depending on what you’re selling, depending on what you need from the prospect
in order to move them forward to a customer, they might not have it at the time
and they might not have their statement or an account number or their credit
card with them or authorization or approval to buy and they need the check with
somebody else.
Or there’s a committee
involved, whatever that looks like. Business to business, business to consumer,
you know, depending on what that means for you, there’s going to be times where
you can close them in one call and there’s going to be a fair amount of times
where you can’t.
That’s when you need to make
sure that you’re following up with those leads. The challenge can be is that
sales reps can get lazy. I know sales reps don’t like to hear that.
They don’t like to hear the truth.
Managers know it. Owners know sales reps, if you have any kind of inbound leads
that you’re getting or you have warm leads, most salespeople are going to
default to going after those warm leads, those inbound leads or new fresh
populated leads versus chasing down old leads and the tendency can be that
those old leads, the follow-ups get ignored, they don’t get closed and the
focus is on the new one.
Here’s the problem when it
comes to the business side of it, is that all of these leads are at a cost. The
business paid for them. Whether they’re doing the marketing and they’re paying
for the website, the SEO, the search, there’s a cost that goes into that could
be thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars every month or they’re
actually buying leads, so that lead could have cost $50 a hundred dollars $500
$10, whatever that is the company is buying.
Those leads are paying for
those leads to either come in or buying the list that you’re calling on. When
you don’t close enough deals, that means the cost per acquisition is higher for
the company means they’re paying more for marketing to get the deals from you
then might even be profitable for the business. The follow up leads the
pipeline.
That’s where if you’re not
calling them and closing some of those, then that means all of the focus of the
cost per acquisition and the closing is on the new warm inbound leads and I’ll
tell you based on experience, nobody is that good.
Nobody is so good. They can
live off of just a new leads. Inbound leads are warm leads and close enough
deals to meet quota and B, be able to keep the company afloat from a
profitability standpoint of those deals. Nobody is that good.
Nobody can do that 100% of
the time. Inbound, it’s probably not good. It means probably also a lot of
cancels because you’re high pressure. But generally what that means is also
closing low volume because there’s a lot of deals left in the pipeline.
So when your manager or when
your company needs you to close pipeline deals, make those follow-up calls and
you don’t do it. I’ve seen so many reps who just won’t do it or they do it and
they put in kind of a half ass effort and they just don’t really care. When
that happens, that’s costing the company money and is not effective.
That doesn’t work. That’s not
a good business model to let reps sit around and do they want and not make
their follow-up calls. So for someone like this, and I’ve seen this so many
times in the past where just reps either check out or they don’t want to do it,
or they get lazy and spoiled and entitled by those new inbound leads that come
in and they don’t want to chase anybody.
They don’t want to follow up.
They don’t feel like they should. Maybe they are so experienced and so amazing
that they feel like that’s below them. Whatever the case is, I guarantee every
sales organization there is a level and there’s amount of your day that needs
to go into the follow-ups.
So for this person here
didn’t follow up with a lead after a week. Not surprised that they were let go.
Most likely. It wasn’t just the first infraction. It’s probably happened
several times in the past. I know for me, there’s been reps who don’t follow up
with their leads, especially with appointments. It’s like, hey, this person
said, call them on Tuesday.
If they don’t get a call, the
person’s not calling it. The salesperson’s not calling them. Just ignoring it,
just kind of moving their pipeline around and that’s it. There’s an over-under
from a business perspective of the tolerance for that kind of behaviour.
Hopefully that helps. The big
message for this, and the reason why I want to answer this question is because
if you’re in sales, you need to value your pipeline as much as you value new
leads. Your pipeline is full of gold. It’s full of deals that could close.
Now, they could close next
week, they could close next month, whatever your sales cycle is, but it’s full
of gold and that is where the money is made for most sales organizations
because the first inbound deals, the warm leads, whatever those are, those are great
for now, but really the profit comes from the follow-up leads as an overall
business strategy when it comes to sales.
Hopefully that helps. Again,
make sure to subscribe, rate, review. I love the feedback. Send me a message. LinkedIn
is always a great way to go. You can go on there and find me. You can find the
show. You can find cutter consulting group.
Always, remember that
everything in life is sales and people remember the experience you gave them.
View all episodes
By Jason Cutter
4.9
3535 ratings
From a business
perspective this one is an easy answer.
From a professional salesperson’s perspective this one is an easy answer.
An
unprofessional salesperson will debate this one.
Today’s
episode, I address “I was fired from a sales job today for letting a week go
without following up on a lead. Is that fair?”
Episode 84 – Transcript
Welcome to episode 84 of the
sales experience podcast.
Today I’m gonna answer a
question that I’ve seen online. I’ve seen it in real life before. I’ve never
had somebody ask it, but I’ve been involved with situations where this is kind
of the premise behind it and hopefully you’re enjoying all these episodes. If
you haven’t yet, make sure you subscribe to the podcast.
Again, iTunes, Stitcher, Sound
cloud, Spotify, you can find it everywhere. Cutter Consulting, group.com
website. You can find them there. You can find a link there for listening to it
in any location you want. Can also find full transcripts of every episode on
there.
So if you listen to it and
you’re like, hey, that was great, but I didn’t have a chance to take a note.
Always go to the cutter consulting group.com site slash podcast you can find
every episode there, all of the transcripts you can find what you need, copy
and paste.
Use it in your sales career,
in your sales, like with your sales team as an owner of a company. You know,
take all these bits. That’s why I do this. So that you can have this valuable
information and not just hear it like a shelf help book where you hear it or
you read it sounded great. You put it on the shelf, you never see it again
until you have to move.
The goal of this and what I
do is for you to put these things in actions. Why I try to keep these episodes
under 10 minutes so you can listen to a digest, take action on it, put it in
place, next episode the following day. Put that in action and just layer on all
these little bits over time in order to change the sales experience for you and
your customers. All right, today’s question.
I was fired from a sales job
today for letting a week go by without following up on a lead. Is that fair?
Now, other situations I’ve seen like this is where I’ve had to let reps go or I
have advised managers and companies to let somebody go who’s literally not
following up on their leads and they’re not putting in the action.
Now, why is this a big deal?
Sales Reps, hopefully it doesn’t apply to you if you’re listening to this, but
just in case it does. The reason why this is so important is that sales reps
need to follow up on their leads.
Fundamentally, no matter what
you’re selling, there’s a good chance that it’s never a one call close 100% of
the time. Now, of course the goal is probably to close deals in one call as
much as possible, but there’s usually a ideal percentage for every industry.
Now if you’re in something
like mortgage, it’s never a one call close. However, a one call close to you
may be getting the information you need to pull a credit report to prequalify
somebody, so that may be considered your one called close.
Instead of having multiple
calls in order to even get to that point where you’re getting a social or
they’re filling out information online or they’re filling out your basic 10 oh
three so you can get done what you need.
Other industries, it may be
more of a chance of a one call close or that may look different, including
payment information and you know, getting the three digit number on the back of
their credit card or whatever that may be for you. In every industry there’s
some type of one call close and there’s a percentage that you should be
shooting for.
That usually is not 100% the
reason why is there’s always gonna be prospects who ae need more time there in
a personality type, let’s say like analysts where they’re not necessarily going
to make one call close buying decisions.
The other part is that
depending on what you’re selling, depending on what you need from the prospect
in order to move them forward to a customer, they might not have it at the time
and they might not have their statement or an account number or their credit
card with them or authorization or approval to buy and they need the check with
somebody else.
Or there’s a committee
involved, whatever that looks like. Business to business, business to consumer,
you know, depending on what that means for you, there’s going to be times where
you can close them in one call and there’s going to be a fair amount of times
where you can’t.
That’s when you need to make
sure that you’re following up with those leads. The challenge can be is that
sales reps can get lazy. I know sales reps don’t like to hear that.
They don’t like to hear the truth.
Managers know it. Owners know sales reps, if you have any kind of inbound leads
that you’re getting or you have warm leads, most salespeople are going to
default to going after those warm leads, those inbound leads or new fresh
populated leads versus chasing down old leads and the tendency can be that
those old leads, the follow-ups get ignored, they don’t get closed and the
focus is on the new one.
Here’s the problem when it
comes to the business side of it, is that all of these leads are at a cost. The
business paid for them. Whether they’re doing the marketing and they’re paying
for the website, the SEO, the search, there’s a cost that goes into that could
be thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars every month or they’re
actually buying leads, so that lead could have cost $50 a hundred dollars $500
$10, whatever that is the company is buying.
Those leads are paying for
those leads to either come in or buying the list that you’re calling on. When
you don’t close enough deals, that means the cost per acquisition is higher for
the company means they’re paying more for marketing to get the deals from you
then might even be profitable for the business. The follow up leads the
pipeline.
That’s where if you’re not
calling them and closing some of those, then that means all of the focus of the
cost per acquisition and the closing is on the new warm inbound leads and I’ll
tell you based on experience, nobody is that good.
Nobody is so good. They can
live off of just a new leads. Inbound leads are warm leads and close enough
deals to meet quota and B, be able to keep the company afloat from a
profitability standpoint of those deals. Nobody is that good.
Nobody can do that 100% of
the time. Inbound, it’s probably not good. It means probably also a lot of
cancels because you’re high pressure. But generally what that means is also
closing low volume because there’s a lot of deals left in the pipeline.
So when your manager or when
your company needs you to close pipeline deals, make those follow-up calls and
you don’t do it. I’ve seen so many reps who just won’t do it or they do it and
they put in kind of a half ass effort and they just don’t really care. When
that happens, that’s costing the company money and is not effective.
That doesn’t work. That’s not
a good business model to let reps sit around and do they want and not make
their follow-up calls. So for someone like this, and I’ve seen this so many
times in the past where just reps either check out or they don’t want to do it,
or they get lazy and spoiled and entitled by those new inbound leads that come
in and they don’t want to chase anybody.
They don’t want to follow up.
They don’t feel like they should. Maybe they are so experienced and so amazing
that they feel like that’s below them. Whatever the case is, I guarantee every
sales organization there is a level and there’s amount of your day that needs
to go into the follow-ups.
So for this person here
didn’t follow up with a lead after a week. Not surprised that they were let go.
Most likely. It wasn’t just the first infraction. It’s probably happened
several times in the past. I know for me, there’s been reps who don’t follow up
with their leads, especially with appointments. It’s like, hey, this person
said, call them on Tuesday.
If they don’t get a call, the
person’s not calling it. The salesperson’s not calling them. Just ignoring it,
just kind of moving their pipeline around and that’s it. There’s an over-under
from a business perspective of the tolerance for that kind of behaviour.
Hopefully that helps. The big
message for this, and the reason why I want to answer this question is because
if you’re in sales, you need to value your pipeline as much as you value new
leads. Your pipeline is full of gold. It’s full of deals that could close.
Now, they could close next
week, they could close next month, whatever your sales cycle is, but it’s full
of gold and that is where the money is made for most sales organizations
because the first inbound deals, the warm leads, whatever those are, those are great
for now, but really the profit comes from the follow-up leads as an overall
business strategy when it comes to sales.
Hopefully that helps. Again,
make sure to subscribe, rate, review. I love the feedback. Send me a message. LinkedIn
is always a great way to go. You can go on there and find me. You can find the
show. You can find cutter consulting group.
Always, remember that
everything in life is sales and people remember the experience you gave them.