If your company is like this, then you’re in big trouble and you need to fix it quickly! Here is the maddening experience I recently had.
I’m in the market to purchase a treadmill so I was trying to keep my business with local companies before I went to a big box store. And here is what happened.
- I emailed a local company that services residential treadmills and sells used treadmills. I told them that I was looking to buy a treadmill and I asked them to contact me.
- So instead of them calling me or sending me information on their current stock of treadmills, they emailed me back and asked me to email them again if I was interested in getting more information.
- I waited a few days and didn’t hear anything more from them. So I emailed them again asking them to send me information on any treadmills they had available.
- After a few days, they replied, saying they had sold their current stock and that I should email them back again in a few days to find out if they had more used units.
So it seems to me that these folks don’t have the slightest clue how handle prospect follow-up and sales opportunities. Do they really say this to everybody? If they get 5-10 similar contacts a week, do they really throw them all away instead of making an easy list of current prospects that they can pro-actively solicit? Do they really think I’m going to spend my valuable time chasing them down when it should be the other way around?
Could this be happening at your company? I hope not. But just in case, you should go out and create a fake email account and test your own company. See what happens when you send an email and give strong buying signals and ask for more information. Is your own company properly capturing and following-up on these opportunities? I hope so. But if they’re not, you better find out quickly and fix this massive leak.
Every sale counts. Don’t let the easy ones get away!