Today we are going to talk about how to follow up in network marketing business the right way.
First I’m going to give you a fun exercise if you really suck at follow-up. Then I’m going to share with you exactly what to say if you’re being ghosted. Finally, I’m going to share with you the secret that sales gurus are not telling you.
The fun exercise if you really suck at follow up!
All right so the big question, do you feel you suck at follow-up? Do you? A lot of people do. When I ask a crowd of probably 90, 95% of the audience raises their hand and it’s not that you suck at follow-up. I’m going to share with you why. Why do I say that, why do I know that it’s true that it’s not that you suck at follow-up?
I want you to imagine for a second a different scenario. I want you to think about someone in your neighborhood and it’s a husband, wife, they have four kids and the wife unfortunately loses her job and the husband…..oh my goodness, hit by a bus. Okay that escalated quickly this is a made-up story but bear with me. All right so you have the wife, lost her job, husband no longer with us, four kids and this family is amazing, they participate in all the bake sales, they’re on the parent teacher association, they take their kids around on Saturdays to pick up trash around the neighborhood, they are loved by so many people so you being an amazing neighbor and an amazing human being, decide that you’re going to start a fundraiser for them.
You reach out to hundreds of people, you reach out to six blocks that way, four blocks that way, you reach out to the parent teacher association, you reach out to the ex co-workers of the husband and the wife and you get 200 people to pledge that they will donate some amount of money. Five dollars, 20 dollars, hundred dollars. The question is how many people will you follow up with? That’s right, a hundred percent. In fact you’ll be amazing at follow-up. You will see Miss Johnson pull her car in across the street and she hasn’t been returning your calls. You will walk over there “oh hey, hey. How you doing? Hey, Miss Johnson, you said that you would give the ten dollars…” All of a sudden you’re a mercenary at follow-up. Why? Because in that scenario, you don’t run the risk of looking bad.
The reason that you don’t follow up is you’re more scared about how you look than possibly helping that other person. Ouch, but it’s true. If you think that you’re a pest or a bug or you’re going to be annoying or that they’re going to chastise you for following up with them, then you just won’t do it because you’re more addicted to how you look than possibly helping that person with your product or your service.
Here’s the thing you need to understand. You can suck at sales but be good at follow-up, you’ll make plenty of money. Bad follow-up is better than no follow-up.
What if your being ghosted?
Okay, now that you know that you have the ability to follow up, let’s talk about what to say when you’re being ghosted. You know what I mean, they stop responding to you, right? You’re reaching out to somebody and they just go cold, they ghost you, they’re not responding. Here’s the thing that you may want to consider. You may want to consider taking responsibility for the conversation. This is a little bit of a trick but I’m going to give you some advice.
What I said to get a lot of people to go from ghosting me to actually buying my product or service. If I’ve reached out to someone and I’ve had some kind of contact with them and they’ve replied to at least one message and then all of a sudden they go four days without responding to one of my messages, I’m going to send them what I call the “four-day follow-up.” The “four-day follow-up” is “hey, I just want to apologize. I’ve been so busy I haven’t had a chance to follow
up with you, how are you?”
I am not going to ask them the question that they didn’t respond to. I am not going to try to sell them or close them. I’m not going to try to pressure them into something. All I’m doing is I’m trying to get a reaction. I’m trying to get a response. I want to take them from non-respondent to respondent.
You may be thinking well it’s their fault, it’s not my fault that they didn’t respond. Yes…and a lot of people they really must be right, but a lot of people they want to be right versus rich versus happy, right? Let’s not care so much about being, right, and let’s get some more responses so that you can help more people and make more money. That has a good chance of you getting a response. The second message, if they don’t follow up to that...then you could say “hey, I just want to make sure you saw my message, hope you’re doing well.” That one will get you a little bit of a response…not a lot.
The third one is the one that will absolutely get you more results than any other, anything you can send and that is “hey, it seems to me like you’re not interested in this so I’m going to mark you off my list but I wish you the very best that life has to offer.” Now that doesn’t mean that you have to stop following up with them, you can still follow up, but that FOMO, that fear of missing out, that oh my god, I’m going to be taken off a list… that will get more people responding to you than almost any message you can send them.
Let’s hear from you!
Before we get to my last point I would love to hear from you. What’s a message that someone has sent you that you’re thinking, “how do I respond to this,” right? Maybe they were ghosting you then they step back into the the messages. Drop me a comment. I read every comment, I respond to every comment. Share with me a message that really makes you scratch your head and you’re not sure how to respond to.
The secret that sales gurus are not telling you!
Here’s the secret that sales gurus are not telling you. What do most sales gurus tell you? They tell you to use my system and you are going to close more sales and you’re going to crush it you are going to make it rain, you are going to rock and roll and you are going to reach the top of your company et cetera.
Well… one thing that they don’t share with you is the importance of follow-up. About two years ago I hired a gentleman named Grant Cardone. You may may have heard of Grant, he’s a real estate billionaire and he’s just just an amazing individual, very smart individual. I hired him and I will just tell you, I invested a hundred thousand dollars for six hours of his time. But in hour number one, he gave me ideas that helped me make over a million (additional) dollars that year. Well worth the investment, he had me speak on a stage right after Magic Johnson and so it was pretty crazy.
Anyways, I spent some time with his sales manager. His sales manager who runs the sales floor and I asked a very simple question.
I said, “hey I’m just curious you guys train every day on sales and consume sales education, right?”
He’s said, “yes.”
I said, “You guys make calls every single day non-stop every day.
He says, “Yeah.”
So I say, “okay what percentage of your sales are made on the very first contact or don’t you contact someone and because of your super skills, you close them into your deal.”
Do you know the answer?
I wonder what your guess is….
Two percent. Now why do I share that? I share that because here is highly trained probably studied more sales than most people on the planet but they still only convert two percent in the initial contact. 98% of their money is made in follow-up.
How about you? Do you study sales every single day? Are you consuming a chapter in a sales book every single day? Are you spending an hour a day studying sales? Well even if you are which most people are not, then you shouldn’t expect a sale in the very first contact. You shouldn’t expect a sale in your very first message. You have to get it into your head that you need to get better at follow-up. Now what if you refuse? What if you’re like I’m not going to follow up. No, never.
Well if you refuse to follow up then what does that mean? That just means you’re going to have to work 50 times harder because you’re just going to have to get more leads and find those “unicorns” that close on the very first contact. Understand that you’re still (even if you do that strategy) you will still be leaving 98 percent of your income on the table.
Let me help you.
I want to help you with a resource. I recorded an entire video on this subject and it’s called my crazy follow-up. I have always been a beast at follow-up. I have had people that told me “no” for years that I just kept dripping on and eventually bought into my product or coaching. I do it in a way where it’s not intrusive and it doesn’t take a whole lot of time and I want to teach you how to do that as well. This video is located inside of our rank makers university.
If you would like to learn more about this, it has my crazy follow-up which details every possible way that you can follow up using things such as updates and deflection and ways to really get your prospect wanting to work with you or wanting your product or service. If you would like to check that out, here is the link rankmakers.com/rmu, feel free to click it and it will take you over to rank makers university where we have my crazy follow-up. We have my closing blueprint and hundreds of videos teaching you every single step of the sales process.
Ray Higdon
Play Bigger. Make An Impact.
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