How often should you follow up with a prospect after a sales call? (2024)

FAQs

How often should you follow up with a prospect after a sales call? ›

As a general rule, you should follow up with a prospect within 24 hours of the sales call, and then every 2-4 days until you get a response or a next step. Depending on different scenarios, your follow-up strategy should vary.

Let's start with the big question: how many times should you follow up with your prospects? Honestly, the best answer is probably, "Way more than you think." According to Brevet, 80 percent of sales require five follow-ups after an initial meeting.

If the above sounds like you, you're not alone. Studies indicate that almost 80% of sales leads require at least 5 follow-ups after the initial sales meeting. But nearly 44% of salespeople give up after just 1 follow-up or forget to follow up altogether.

5. Why Multiple Follow-Ups Required: 80% of sales typically require an average of 5 follow-up calls after the initial meeting. This hints at the need for consistent effort and communication throughout the sales cycle. The takeaway is clear: don't give up easily!

However, a general rule of thumb is to wait at least 3-5 business days before sending a follow-up email.

Sending a follow-up email every day doesn't show you have gumption or passion—it shows you don't respect a person's time. What is this? The general rule of thumb is to give at least a week before following up.

80% of sales require five follow-up calls.

Since so few salespeople keep up their follow-ups to five calls or more, there's money left on the table!

Here's a simple follow-up schedule for prospects after a sales call: Day 1: Initial contact. Day 3: First follow-up. Day 10: Second follow-up. Day 17: Third follow-up.

For best results, it's recommended to wait 3-5 business days between follow-ups. However, depending on the situation and recipient, you may need to adjust your timing accordingly. Keep in mind that people are often busy, so give them ample time to read and respond to your emails.

The only real time to stop following up is when someone isn't a qualified prospect. Maybe you realize they don't have the money for your product or aren't the right size for your service. If the company is too small for your service to apply or too big for you to provide for, it's okay to call it quits.

What is the 80 20 rule sales calls? ›

The 80/20 rule of active listening says that in any sales conversation the sales rep should spend 80% of the time listening and only 20% of the time talking. In the vast majority of cases, the customer doesn't want to know what you think, he wants to tell you what he thinks, how he feels and what he needs.

The Rule of 7 asserts that a potential customer should encounter a brand's marketing messages at least seven times before making a purchase decision. When it comes to engagement for your marketing campaign, this principle emphasizes the importance of repeated exposure for enhancing recognition and improving retention.

According to research, 48 percent of salespeople never even make a single follow-up attempt—so understanding how companies can improve their strategy is key for any business that wants to increase their sales.

At most, wait three days before following up after no response. If you wait a week, it'll be too long. And if you send an email on the same day, you'll appear desperate. Send two to three emails in your sequence, and remember: never send a breakup email.

The frequency of follow-up depends on the stage of the recruitment process. During the initial stages, you may follow-up once every few days or a week. However, after an interview, you should follow-up promptly and keep the candidate informed about the status of their application.

Generally, if you haven't heard back from the recruiter, you should wait five business weeks or a full week before following up a second time. (However, if you were told it would take longer to hear back then wait until that window has passed before reaching out a second time.)

So I suggest you think about contacting your prospects every 3 or 4 days -- unless you have a very important trigger event that happens. In that situation, you might need to contact them quite frequently within a week because you have some ideas regarding a specific situation that just happened.