How To Create A Good Follow-Up System For Your Network Marketing Business

One thing I have come to observe with our consultants in Healthgarde is that we throw away a lot of potential recruits due to improper follow-ups.







How To Create A Good Follow-Up System For Your Network Marketing Business

 A study done by the Association of Sales Executives revealed that 81% of all sales happen on or after the fifth contact. If you’re a small business person and you’re only doing one or two follow-ups imagine all the business you’re losing. Not following up with your prospects and customers is the same as filling up your bathtub without first putting the stopper in the drain!
But, don’t be disheartened if you are among the distributors that do not do any follow-up. The good news is you have ample room for profitable improvement. Consistent follow-up creates a predictable and profitable stream of prospects and customers. Small businesses that capture leads and follow-up with them enjoy higher conversion rates and a higher percentage of referrals than those that don’t.









3 Types of Follow-Ups 

There are three types of people you should be following up with;
  1.  “suspects” (people in your target marketplace),
  2.  “prospects” (people who have responded to your marketing but have not purchased 
  3.  “customers” (people who have purchased something from you.) 

Each follows up message and offer will be different for each type of person. With suspects, you’ll want to entice them to call you or visit your store/office. With prospects, you need to persuade them to make their first purchase. And with customers, you want to convince them to come back and do more business with you and give your referrals. Obviously, the hardest type of person to follow up with is a suspect because they haven’t shown any interest yet in a pool or hot tub and you usually don’t have their contact information. But that’s not true with prospects and customers. You not only know who they are, but you should already have their contact information. And if you follow up with your customers with consistency you’ll find that they will help you turn your suspects into prospects and prospects into customers for you through referrals.

After asking many small distributors the reason they don’t follow up, I often hear responses such as, "I don’t have the resources to follow all leads", or "We’re usually too busy to do a lot of follow-ups." These responses automatically set off red flags that tell me that they lack a systematic process for following up. The problem is not that they don’t have the capacity to follow up with prospects; it’s that they don’t have the systems in place to do it.








What Does a Good Follow-Up System Look Like?

  • A good follow-up marketing system should have three attributes.
  • It should be systematic, meaning that the follow-up process is done the same way every time.
  • It should generate consistent, predictable results.
  • It should require minimal physical interaction to make it run, thus, social media tools like WhatsApp become handy...  

Does this look unrealistic? Not only can it be done, but it’s also being done every day. The secret to "follow-up marketing" is to make it automatic so that you don’t have to lift a finger but the job still gets done. With today’s technology, it’s simpler than ever. Automating your follow-up processes gives you more time to work "on" your business rather than "in" your business. Before your follow-up can be effective you must be able to take proper records of suspects, prospects, and customers.







You can get the details of SUSPECTS through online advertorials and flyers/posters shared in a target area. You can now send intermittent text messages either through WhatsApp, text messages, or automated emails and bulk SMS, which helps you to preset both emails and bulk SMS that goes to their phones. ( For details in using automated emails and bulk SMS, see my yet-to-be-released piece RECRUITING STRATEGIES  IN MULTI-LEVEL MARKETING ). This way of following up can be applied to both PROSPECTS and CUSTOMERS. Usually, when doing direct text or WhatsApp messaging, you should include three to five texts spaced out about seven days apart. You can also follow up this way with emails. The point here is to maintain a regular sequence of contact.
Each sequence should follow a logical argument and you might consider bolstering the offer with each communication using a deadline as a motivator to act now. As an example, in the third communication, you could say, "I’m surprised you haven’t taken me up on my generous offer. What’s holding you back?" Or consider saying, "I’ve written you three times and you still haven’t taken me up on my offer so I’m going to pull out all the stops and make you an offer you simply can’t refuse." Notice how the language always links the previous communication and increases the boldness of the offer. It’s the same type of conversation you might have in a regular sales conversation.

Some forget that maintaining the loyalty of an already existing customer is important.  If you don’t do a regular follow-up on your existing customers, you may not be there when they are snatched by other networks or when they go to other networks for alternatives, if you are not there to provide them with what they want. So always keep in touch either physically or digitally to keep them.







What About Calling to Follow Up? 

You’ll notice that I didn’t say anything about calling your prospect. That’s because you want your prospect to have already received your educational marketing messages and have most of their questions answered before they call you. An educated prospect is your best prospect.

They already know why you’re different, what your value proposition is, and how you’re uniquely qualified to meet their needs. In essence, they’ve pre-qualified themselves before you ever have to spend time physically speaking to them. This drastically reduces the sales cycle and increases your conversion rate because you have positioned your business to be their only logical choice.
However depending on the initial response, phone calls though expensive can be an effective way to do your follow-ups.

Conclusion 
Follow-up marketing will boost your closing rate and dramatically increase your customer satisfaction. Following up with systematic processes allows you to leverage your salespeople’s time and enhance their productivity, which will result in more sales with less effort, and isn’t that what you want? Start winning more sales today by implementing your own follow-up marketing system.

Remember, when even fallacy is sounded repeatedly in the ears of a discerning heart, it transmutes to a legacy worth cherishing- Bethel.

Happy follow-up marketing!
Call/WhatsApp Felix Joshua at +2347038574473, +2348074256315 for more information on how to start your own healthgarde (network marketing) business in Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa, and the USA.

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