A arte sutil de fazer o acompanhamento com a automação de e-mail

Let’s start with the ‘why’

Por que se preocupar em fazer o acompanhamento?

Bem, porque funciona. O acompanhamento faz com que você venda.

As estatísticas mostram que 80% das vendas são realizadas após pelo menos cinco acompanhamentos.

As estatísticas também mostram que 44% dos representantes de vendas desistem após a primeira rejeição.

E fica melhor ainda:

• 22% interrompe o acompanhamento após duas rejeições
• 14% interromper o acompanhamento após três
• 12% interromper o acompanhamento após quatro

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

Você leu certo: você pode vencer 92% dos representantes de vendas apenas sendo 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.

Mas: o que você tem a perder, de fato?

O primeiro contato é fácil. Você superou o obstáculo de se aproximar de alguém. Você marcou aquela reunião, fez aquela ligação telefônica, enviou aquele e-mail. Você fez seu trabalho, sente-se bem consigo mesmo. 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.

É aqui que entramos no reino do software de CRM. Uma ferramenta que permite que você crie relações humanas com uma infinidade de clientes em potencial ao mesmo tempo.

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.

Criamos o Salesflare como uma ferramenta que ajuda você sem que você tenha que ajudá-la primeiro. Algo que seja mais um assistente de vendas do que uma planilha.

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.

O Zapier permite conectar aplicativos SaaS uns aos outros e fazê-los trabalhar juntos em fluxos autônomos. A ideia é bem simples: cada aplicativo tem uma série de triggers e uma série de actions. Você só precisa indicar qual acionador de um aplicativo deseja acionar qual ação no outro.

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

O exemplo mais relevante aqui seria enviar automaticamente os leads do seu agendador de reuniões para o seu CRM.

Isso seria parecido com o seguinte:

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. Em seu e-mail, você sugere que eles agendem uma reunião com você por meio do link pessoal do seu agendador de reuniões (como YouCanBook.me ou 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. 🤯

Agora, tudo o que você precisa fazer é lançar uma campanha outbound e seu pipeline de vendas será automaticamente preenchido com leads, prontos para que você os acompanhe.

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.

Como vencer no acompanhamento

It’s all you from here on out.

Já falamos sobre isso antes: o único superpoder de que você precisa é a consistência. Você vence a corrida se continuar correndo, não se for 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. A execução é algo, o tempo é tudo

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
• eles simplesmente se esqueceram de responder

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 que é tão difícil olhar além do silêncio e continuar acompanhando até conseguir falar com alguém?

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.

Em outras palavras: procure ter sete pessoas que não gostem de você e três que façam negócios com você, em vez de dez pessoas que gostem de você e nenhuma que faça negócios com você.

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.

Outra ótima ideia pode ser dar um passo atrás quando se trata de vendas e perguntar primeiro a opinião deles sobre algo. Pode ser apenas uma pergunta pessoal ou um pouco mais formal e automatizada, usando uma plataforma especializada em feedback do usuário, como a Mopinion, onde é possível coletar email feedback.

4. Be present without being stalky

Em que intervalos você deve fazer o acompanhamento depois de enviar seu primeiro e-mail?

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:

• Dia 1: 1º e-mail de acompanhamento
• Dia 3: 2º acompanhamento
• Dia 7: Acompanhamento 3d
• Dia 14: 4º acompanhamento
• Dia 25: 5º acompanhamento
• Depois: uma vez por mês

Se você estabeleceu uma conexão com seu cliente potencial sem que ele esteja imediatamente interessado em seu produto, ainda assim faz sentido fazer um acompanhamento uma vez por mês, apenas para manter o relacionamento. Jogue o jogo longo. Sua rede é seu patrimônio líquido, você nunca sabe quais benefícios uma conexão pode trazer.

Para o alcance frio, você pode automatizar isso facilmente usando sequências em sua ferramenta de automação de e-mail.

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. Use lembretes de acompanhamento

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.

É aqui que entra o seu CRM. Faça com que ele informe quando você deve fazer o acompanhamento, criando tarefas e/ou lembretes fáceis para que você possa concentrar sua capacidade intelectual no que é importante: escrever e-mails incríveis para construir relacionamentos.

Para criar uma tarefa no Salesflare, use a caixa superior na tela Tasks (Tarefas).

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 dias é a configuração padrão, mas você pode personalizar esses prazos de acordo com os estágios do seu pipeline de vendas. Basta acessar Settings > Customize Pipelines (Configurações > Personalizar pipelines), clicar no lápis para editar e definir uma quantidade personalizada de dias para os lembretes de inatividade.

There’s even more…

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

Exemplos:

• Um lead respondeu ao seu e-mail frio e agendou uma chamada com você. Como esse lead é automaticamente transferido de seu agendador de reuniões para o pipeline de vendas em seu CRM, um e-mail é enviado automaticamente para confirmar a chamada. Torne-a ainda mais especial enviando um conteúdo relevante.
• A chamada foi bem-sucedida e você arrasta o lead para a próxima etapa do seu pipeline. Isso aciona um e-mail convidando o lead para sua comunidade do Facebook como uma forma de fazê-lo se sentir 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.

Embora o e-mail ainda seja a espinha dorsal da comunicação empresarial, outras mídias podem oferecer mais em termos de capacidade de entrega, rapidez de resposta e efeito geral sobre o cliente em potencial.

O jogo longo: e-mail

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 uma resposta mais rápida: ligação telefônica

Em comparação com o e-mail, uma chamada telefônica é mais difícil de ser ignorada. É mais provável que as pessoas peguem seus telefones do que respondam ao seu e-mail em 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.

O fato de você ser irritante ou não sempre depende de você. Há uma diferença entre ligar para alguém uma ou dez vezes por dia. A primeira é chamada de demonstração de interesse, a segunda, de perseguição. Você foi avisado.

O compromisso: 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.

Bem-vindo ao século 21: mídia social

As pessoas estão recorrendo cada vez mais às plataformas de mídia social e à sua funcionalidade de bate-papo para se comunicar, não apenas em suas vidas pessoais. Todos os dias, meus aplicativos do LinkedIn e do Facebook Messenger são iluminados com novas mensagens recebidas de todo o mundo.

Faz sentido estabelecer um relacionamento virtual nas mídias sociais depois que você e seu cliente potencial tiverem estabelecido um primeiro contato amigável. Seguir seu cliente potencial no Twitter e conectar-se a ele no LinkedIn reduzirá a distância em seu relacionamento mútuo, especialmente se você puder se estabelecer como uma pessoa confiável ao agregar valor nessas 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.

Em Salesflare, seus Contatos serão automaticamente enriquecidos com contas de mídia social para que você possa ir do seu CRM diretamente para os perfis do LinkedIn.

Para obter mais inspiração sobre vendas sociais, confira nossos Playbooks para LinkedIn e Facebook.

Para fazer com que seu cliente potencial se sinta especial: notas escritas à mão

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.

Pode parecer contraintuitivo, mas você pode fazer isso em escala. O Maillift é um serviço que escreve suas cartas manuscritas para você. Eles têm uma integração com o Zapier, o que significa que você pode até mesmo automatizar isso.

Nada supera a 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.

Se você quiser causar uma boa impressão e obter as respostas mais reais: vá até lá. Fazer ou morrer, não há como tentar.

7. Adotar uma abordagem 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. Ajude seu cliente potencial a avançar com chamadas para ação

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.

Faça com que eles iniciem seu teste, ofereça o download de seu e-book mais recente, envie um link para sua agenda, convide-os para seu grupo no Facebook. Você deve ter uma ideia clara do que deseja alcançar em cada estágio do funil de vendas e ter CTAs específicas para induzir seu cliente potencial a subir nesse funil.

10. Add a pinch of funny

Poucas coisas neste mundo são tão contagiosas e conectantes quanto o bom 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.

Ou essa girafa 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 interação como uma nova chance de estabelecer um relacionamento, sendo persistentemente positivo.

Recapitulação

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. No entanto, jogue o jogo longo. Como diz o ditado: seu valor líquido é sua rede. Mesmo que seu valor não seja imediatamente relevante para um cliente em potencial, nunca se sabe como vocês poderão se ajudar mutuamente no futuro. Relacionamentos significativos o levarão adiante, nos negócios e na 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. Use seu cérebro para chegar até seu cliente potencial. Descubra o que os motiva, elabore sua mensagem para se adequar ao caso específico deles e use o humor para se destacar no meio do barulho. Oriente-os em sua própria narrativa e em direção a metas 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.