El sutil arte del seguimiento con la automatización del correo electrónico

Let’s start with the ‘why’

¿Por qué molestarse en hacer un seguimiento?

Porque funciona. El seguimiento consigue ventas.

Las estadísticas muestran que 80% de las ventas se realizan después de al menos cinco seguimientos.

Las estadísticas también muestran que el 44% de los representantes de ventas abandonan tras el primer rechazo.

Se pone mejor:

• 22% suspende el seguimiento tras dos rechazos
• 14% dejar de seguir después de tres
• 12% dejar de seguir después de cuatro

👉🏼 92% of sales reps give up before the crucial fifth follow-up.

Has leído bien: puedes vencer a 92% de los representantes de ventas con sólo ser persistente.

That’s easier said than done though. Most sales reps know they should follow up consistently, but are afraid to do so. Afraid of being rejected.

Sending countless emails to someone to then be ignored or rejected time and time again makes you feel like you’re annoying and nobody wants to be annoying.

Pero, ¿qué puedes perder?

El primer contacto es fácil. Has superado el obstáculo de acercarte a alguien. Has concertado esa reunión, has hecho esa llamada telefónica, has enviado ese correo electrónico. Has hecho tu trabajo, te sientes bien contigo mismo. It’s up to them now, right?

That’s where you go wrong.

Get it in your head: whether you get a response from your prospect is on you. You’re not entitled to anything and the waiting game isn’t going to get you anywhere.

Why follow up? Because it’s good for business.

You need a CRM tool

Before we transform you into an email follow-up superhero, we need to put you in the driver’s seat.

Remember, we’re assuming you used automation for personalized outreach at scale. No set of magic tricks is going to hold much water if you’re not equipped to deal with the waves of replies your automated outbound campaigns are triggering.

Aquí es donde entramos en el terreno del software CRM. Una herramienta que te permite entablar relaciones humanas con multitud de clientes potenciales a la vez.

At Salesflare we believe most CRM tools achieve the opposite: they force you to log calls, update contacts, attach emails and other mindless admin work humans aren’t meant to be doing. You’re being kept away from what really matters: talking to prospects.

Hemos creado Salesflare como una herramienta que le ayuda sin que usted tenga que ayudarle primero. Algo que es más un asistente de ventas que una hoja de cálculo.

Going forward we’ll be using Salesflare as CRM of reference in the follow-up equation, without making the tactics exclusive to it.

Automate everything that doesn’t need you

In order to focus all of your time and talent on follow-up and building relations, you first need to get rid of everything else that’s keeping you from doing that.

Technology has matured up to the point where it doesn’t need adult supervision anymore. Take advantage of that. Have the robots take care of the robot work so you can focus on stuff that matters.

You can automate pretty much everything straight up to the point where you’re needed in the conversation. No coding required, a combination of Salesflare and Zapier will do.

Zapier permite conectar apps SaaS entre sí y hacer que funcionen juntas en flujos autónomos. La idea es bastante sencilla: cada app tiene una serie de disparadores y una serie de acciones. Sólo tienes que indicar qué disparador de una app quieres que desencadene qué acción en la otra.

One triggered action is called a Zap. Depending on how complex the flow, you’ll need one or more Zaps to make it work.

El ejemplo más relevante en este caso sería enviar automáticamente los clientes potenciales de su programador de reuniones a su CRM.

Eso se vería así:

1. You send out personalised emails at scale using the email workflows in Salesflare. (Want to see how? Here’s a customer showing how he uses the email workflows for prospecting.)
2. En tu correo electrónico, sugiéreles que reserven una reunión contigo a través del enlace personal de tu programador de reuniones (como YouCanBook.me o Calendly).
3. You set up Zapier to automatically create an account/company, contact and opportunity in your CRM, Salesflare. You can even automatically create a task to follow up and store some more info in custom fields or an internal note. Just use your imagination. 🤯

Ahora todo lo que tiene que hacer es lanzar una campaña saliente y su canal de ventas se llenará automáticamente de clientes potenciales, listos para que les haga un seguimiento.

Of course your leads don’t have to come from email. You can also use Zapier to push leads to your CRM from forms (e.g. Typeform, Google Forms) , Facebook Lead Ads or chatbots (Collect.chat, ManyChat, Chatfuel). Browse around in our Zapier templates for inspiration.

Cómo ganar en el seguimiento

It’s all you from here on out.

Ya lo hemos mencionado antes: el único superpoder que necesitas es la constancia. La carrera se gana corriendo, no siendo rápido.

How to win at following-up? Keep at it until you get a response, no matter what that response is. Getting a ‘no’ is not losing. It allows you to move on to the next one and invest your time and talents where it matters.

That’s the mindset you need to get you in the game. Now add the following 11 ingredients to the formula to become a champion of the game.

1. La ejecución es algo, el tiempo lo es todo

By ‘response’, I really mean response. Not getting an email back doesn’t count and shouldn’t stop you.

Too often sales people assume silence is a sign of rejection, while in reality it’s just bad timing.

First off, your email could have just gotten lost in clutter and confusion. Using email tracking can shed some light here. If you use Salesflare’s email sidebar for Gmail or Outlook or email from the CRM itself, it can tell you if an email has been opened or not.

Even if your recipient opened your email, there’s still multiple possible reasons other than rejection for prospects to not reply to your email:

• they’re not available (illness, travelling, personal problems)
• they’re in the middle of something else
• simplemente se olvidaron de contestar

Whatever it is, don’t take it personal. Assuming you didn’t get an email back because of rejection is a losing mindset. Change things up: assume the timing just wasn’t right and try again.

Maybe they ignored you because they’re not interested, maybe not.

The only thing you know for sure is that you don’t know. Get out of maybe-land and follow up until you do. The only outcomes you should settle for are ‘yes’ and ‘no’.

In the game of follow-up, getting a ‘no’ is not losing, it’s winning. When someone tells you they’re not interested, you can move and focus your efforts on the next prospect. The only way you can lose at follow-up is by staying stuck at ‘maybe’.

2. Chase clarity over being liked

¿Por qué es tan difícil mirar más allá del silencio y seguir investigando hasta dar con alguien?

You’re afraid of being annoying.

Well, guess what: you’re not in high school anymore. Being popular isn’t going to make your business grow. Sales are.

Dicho de otro modo: aspire a no gustar a siete personas y a que tres hagan negocios con usted en lugar de gustar a diez personas y que cero hagan negocios con usted.

The seven that are turned off by you because you’re trying to bring them value don’t deserve your energy anyway. Invest that energy in the people that do matter.

3. Know when to stop

Some people do use silence to tell you they’re not interested.

As a rule of thumb, five reach-outs without a reply equals ‘no’. You can safely assume they’re not interested in the value you have to offer and invest your energy on someone else.

Otra gran idea puede ser dar un paso atrás a la hora de vender y preguntarles primero su opinión sobre algo. Podría tratarse simplemente de una pregunta personal, o podría ser algo más formal y automatizado utilizando una plataforma especializada en opiniones de usuarios, como Mopinion, donde puedes recopilar opiniones por correo electrónico.

4. Be present without being stalky

¿Con qué periodicidad hay que hacer un seguimiento después de enviar el primer correo electrónico?

Start off strong and decrease frequency over time. The longer a prospect doesn’t reply, the more likely it becomes the span of timing not being right is significant.

Here’s a general outline to start from:

• Día 1: Primer correo electrónico de seguimiento
• Día 3: 2º seguimiento
• Día 7: Seguimiento 3d
• Día 14: 4º seguimiento
• Día 25: 5º seguimiento
• Después: una vez al mes

Si ha establecido una conexión con su cliente potencial sin que esté inmediatamente interesado en su producto, sigue teniendo sentido hacer un seguimiento con él una vez al mes, simplemente para mantener la relación. Juegue a largo plazo. Su red es su valor neto, nunca se sabe qué beneficios puede reportar una conexión.

Para la captación en frío, puede automatizarla fácilmente utilizando secuencias en su herramienta de automatización del correo electrónico.

You can perfectly replicate your follow-up routine in a Salesflare email workflow and even add some flexibility to it. Say there’s a link to your calendar in your email for prospects to book a call with you: you can have the sequence break off when they click that link too.

5. Utilizar recordatorios de seguimiento

Follow-ups aren’t just needed when doing cold outreach. You may already have made some progress with a prospect, but lines go cold again before you know it. It’s your job to keep the relationship alive. Remember: you aren’t entitled to anything.

“I don’t have to write that down, I’ll remember it.”

– No, you won’t.

Your brain isn’t a safe to store data in, there’s technology for that. There’s no way you won’t make mistakes having to keep track of following up on multiple opportunities at the same time. You’ll forget to follow up and miss out on sales.

Aquí es donde entra en juego su CRM. Haz que te diga cuándo debes hacer un seguimiento creando tareas sencillas y/o recordatorios para que puedas centrar tu atención en lo que importa: escribir correos electrónicos excelentes para crear relaciones.

Para crear una tarea en Salesflare, utilice el cuadro superior de la pantalla Tareas.

We wouldn’t be Salesflare if we wouldn’t have some automation powers up our sleeves. Next to Tasks, we’ll also make sure you keep your eyes on the ball with automatic inactivity reminders. These will be triggered after 10 days of inactivity on opportunities in your sales pipeline.

10 días es la configuración estándar, puedes personalizar estos tiempos de acuerdo a las etapas de tu pipeline de ventas. Solo tienes que ir a Configuración > Personalizar pipelines, hacer clic en el lápiz para editar y establecer una cantidad personalizada de días para los recordatorios de inactividad.

There’s even more…

In Salesflare, you’re also able to send out automatic follow-up emails based on triggers such as stage changes.

Ejemplos:

• Un cliente potencial ha respondido a su correo electrónico y ha concertado una llamada con usted. Como este cliente potencial pasa automáticamente del programador de reuniones al canal de ventas de tu CRM, se envía automáticamente un correo electrónico para confirmar la llamada. Hazlo aún más especial enviando un contenido relevante.
• La llamada ha ido bien y el cliente potencial pasa a la siguiente fase del proceso. Esto desencadena un correo electrónico en el que invitas al cliente potencial a tu comunidad de Facebook para que se sienta especial.
• You’ve agreed on terms with a lead and as they move to the next stage in your pipeline, an automated proposal email is sent their way.
• You’re selling Saas. A lead’s trial is expired, without him taking action to start paying. As he moves to the ‘Lost’ — stage an email is triggered to convince him to subscribe or at least extend his trial.

6. It doesn’t always have to be email

Following up and email go hand in hand, but there’s more to the story.

Aunque el correo electrónico sigue siendo la espina dorsal de la comunicación empresarial, otros medios pueden ofrecer más en términos de capacidad de entrega, rapidez de respuesta y efecto general en el cliente potencial.

El juego largo: el correo electrónico

Email is the safe and reliable option. It allows you to gently nudge your prospect multiple times without being intrusive. You leave the prospect in control over when and how they’ll respond, but it may also take you long to really get through and reach your goals.

Para una respuesta más rápida: llamada telefónica

En comparación con el correo electrónico, una llamada telefónica es más difícil de ignorar. Es más probable que la gente coja el teléfono que responda a tu correo electrónico en menos de 2 minutos.

The same reason makes phone calls more intrusive than emails. We all prefer doing things on our own time and follow-up phone calls don’t really rhyme with that. The risk of turning a ‘maybe’ into a ‘no’ is higher for phone calls than it is for emails because the chance of coming across as annoying is higher.

Que seas molesto o no siempre depende de ti. Hay una diferencia entre llamar a alguien una o diez veces al día. Lo primero se llama mostrar interés, lo segundo acosar. Estás avisado.

El compromiso: SMS

If your prospects take too long to answer emails and don’t pick up their phones, you may want to have a go at SMS. As a medium, it’s not as cluttered as email and less intrusive than phone calls, which makes it rather effective to grab your lead’s attention.

You can automate sending SMS’s to your prospects similarly to how we automated emails before, linking your CRM to one of the many available SMS sending apps with Zapier.

Bienvenidos al siglo XXI: las redes sociales

La gente recurre cada vez más a las plataformas de las redes sociales y a sus funciones de chat para comunicarse, no sólo en su vida personal. Cada día, mis aplicaciones de LinkedIn y Facebook Messenger se llenan de nuevos mensajes procedentes de todo el mundo.

Tiene sentido establecer una relación virtual en las redes sociales una vez que tú y tu posible cliente hayáis establecido un primer contacto amistoso. Seguir a tu cliente potencial en Twitter y conectar con él en LinkedIn reducirá la distancia en vuestra relación mutua, sobre todo si puedes establecerte como una persona de confianza aportando valor en estas plataformas.

If you don’t throw a sales pitch in their faces. But I assume you already got that by now.

Social selling works because communication on social platforms tends to be much more swift, informal and personal. Its easier to become friends here than it is via email and what do you know: friends buy from friends — people they know, like and trust.

Whether it’s chatting one-on-one or sending out little nudges by liking and sharing posts, building relations with your prospects on social media has little to no downsides — though the extent to which you can do it depends on industry, company size, role and age of the prospect. Sixty-year-old managers of big accounting firms are less likely to chat than twenty-five-year-old startup marketers.

En Salesflare, tus Contactos se enriquecerán automáticamente con cuentas de redes sociales para que puedas ir desde tu CRM directamente a sus perfiles de LinkedIn.

Para obtener más inspiración sobre la venta social, echa un vistazo a nuestros Playbooks para LinkedIn y Facebook.

Para que sus clientes potenciales se sientan especiales: notas manuscritas

In sales and marketing: the more a tactic is used, the more its effect will wear off. The reason email has lost its effectiveness over the years is because we get hundreds of them a day. To really grab your contact’s attention, do something that stands out.

Over time, all marketing strategies result in sh*££y clickthrough rates.

We were happy to trade in letters for email because of efficiency. Writing letters takes time, sending them possibly even more. Email was a gift from heaven for its speed, scalability and efficiency. Today, we miss handwritten letters for exactly the same reasons. There’s something special and authentic to it. Because so few are sent, getting a letter has once again became a unique experience.

Puede sonar contraintuitivo, pero puedes hacerlo a escala. Maillift es un servicio que escribirá tus cartas manuscritas por ti. Tienen una integración con Zapier, lo que significa que incluso puedes automatizarlo.

No hay nada mejor que la vida real

“I was in the area, so I thought I’d drop by real quick and see what’s up.”

It’s one of the oldest tricks in the book and it’s not hard to see why.

Si quieres causar impresión y obtener la más auténtica de las respuestas: ve allí. Hacerlo o morir, no hay intento.

7. Adoptar un enfoque individual

The key to winning at follow-ups or any sales/marketing tactic that involves scale and automation is to go out of your way to make your prospect feel like you’re personally involved into solving his or her problems.

This starts with your initial outreach. Don’t settle for just getting first name right, make sure your value and message are tailored to the people you’re sending emails to. Role, industry, company size and geography are all variables you can take into account when crafting your message. If you really want to take it up a notch, use a tool like CrystalKnows to find out personality types of your prospects and create different types of copy to allow your message to land in the best way possible.

You can use Crystal’s data to create a variety of personality aligned cold emails and/or use it in your follow-ups as soon as a lead has entered your sales pipeline. If you want to know how to automate sourcing personality data from LinkedIn profiles with Crystal, hit me up on Messenger.

From the moment you’re in follow-up mode, it’s all about context. Getting this right takes all the empathy and diligence you can bring to the table.

Whether you follow up two or seven times, whether you do it every day or every week, whether you stick to email or use a variety of media — it all depends on the situation your prospect is in plus the relationship and interactions you had with him/her. It’s all about context.

You don’t follow up with a CEO of a Fortune 500 company the same way you do with a millennial marketer of a SaaS startup. The first one gets thousands of emails everyday, the second one will probably reply within ten minutes and then send you a connection request on LinkedIn.

8. Keep it short, sweet, slick, succinct and specific

Don’t waste time. Not yours and not your prospect’s.

We know you’re in love with your product but describing why in three long-winded paragraphs isn’t going to make your prospect get that same feeling. They may not even end up reading it. When I open an email and see a chunk of text, my reflex is to trash it instantly. Can’t help it, it just happens.

You can’t force nor control people’s feelings and convictions. Overtly losing yourself in product pitches shows a lack of empathy and will throw your prospect off rather than draw them in. Get to the point, address the pain or problem they’re struggling with and show how you can solve that in a way that triggers their curiosity.

This little interaction here is not about you, it’s about them and how you can help them. Dedicate your words to a story that has your recipient as the hero and make it compelling enough for them to want to know what comes next — make them click that CTA that sees them going to your website or schedule a call with you.

9. Ayude a su cliente potencial a avanzar con llamadas a la acción

CTA’s are crucial to ensure a steady flow going back and forth. You should have a goal with every follow-up email you send and make it easy for your prospect to get in on that goal. It’s not up to them to make out what comes next.

Incentívelos a iniciar una prueba, ofrézcales la descarga de su último libro electrónico, envíeles un enlace a su calendario o invítelos a su grupo de Facebook. Debes tener una idea clara de lo que quieres conseguir en cada fase del embudo de ventas y disponer de CTA específicas para inducir a tu cliente potencial a avanzar en ese embudo.

10. Add a pinch of funny

Pocas cosas en este mundo son tan contagiosas y conectan tanto como el buen humor.

If you yourself have been followed up on before, you know how little impact the one millionth ‘just checking in’ email has. But what if the person on the other side adds in Spongebob Squarepants to break through the boredom.

O esta jirafa impaciente.

The best example of a funny email follow-up I’ve ever come across, is the baby ducklings email:

There’s tons of stuff you can do with GIFs, memes and just good old copy. Just get creative and see what sticks.

Making someone laugh is the shortest way to connecting with someone, it will set you apart from every ‘just making sure you’re still interested in this’ email out there.

11. Put on your prettiest virtual smile at all times

For most people, their email inbox is a never-ending flow of frustration. Overflowing with unread emails, it’s a never-ending to-do list.

Don’t fuel their feeling of unease by calling them out on not responding to you. Stuff like ‘I’ve already sent you 3 emails’ or ‘just tell me you’re not interested already’ will only backfire. Your prospect likely already feels guilty for not replying to you, making them feel extra bad about it isn’t going to turn the situation around.

Change things up and approach this feeling of anxiety as an opportunity. Be the bigger man and just act indifferent to having been ‘ignored’ before. Keep on giving off a vibe of positivity and availability. Your prospect will develop positive feelings towards you if you can make them feel comfortable when before they felt anxious.

Trate cada interacción como una nueva oportunidad de establecer una relación siendo persistentemente positivo.

Recapitulemos

Whether you’re doing it on cold leads or throughout your sales process: following up will get you more sales.

1. Actually doing it is the single most important thing. Don’t take silence for rejection. The game can only end with ‘yes’ or ‘no’. Everything else is you giving up.
2. To do more, automate everything that doesn’t need your human touch and use an efficient CRM tool so you can stay on top of your game. Every single prospect deserves your uttermost patience, empathy and availability and you can’t give them that if you’re stuck doing mindless admin work the whole time.
3. Stay on top of your game but know when to stop. Three times silence doesn’t necessarily equal rejection, but five times most likely does. It’s not about you not annoying your prospect, it’s about dedicating your time to more qualified ones
4. Decrease the frequency of your emails as time progresses. If your prospect hasn’t replied to the first three email follow-ups in a week, they’re likely not in the situation to connect with you at that time. Sending a fourth email shortly after will rather annoy them than change things up.
5. Pero juega a largo plazo. Como dice el refrán: tu valor neto es tu red. Aunque tu valor no sea inmediatamente relevante para un cliente potencial, nunca se sabe cómo podéis ayudaros mutuamente en el futuro. Las relaciones significativas te harán avanzar, en los negocios y en la vida.
6. Don’t trust your brain to remember when to follow up, it will fail you. Set follow-up reminders instead and automate routine emails altogether.
7. Utiliza tu cerebro para llegar al cliente potencial. Averigüe qué les motiva, elabore un mensaje que se adapte a su caso particular y utilice el humor para destacar entre el ruido. Guíalos a través de su propia narrativa y hacia objetivos intermitentes.
8. Finally, don’t limit yourself to email to build rapport with some. There’s so much more.

The person on the other side is a human being just like you. If you’re able to put yourself in their shoes and provide relevant value, you shouldn’t let anything discourage you from following-up. Never feel bad for being in the business of helping people.