Hack #4 - Double Your Follow-Up Efficiency with Automated Reminders! Average 15 Hours Saved Each Week!

Legal firms frequently used a cunning method called "tickler cards" in the early 1900s. Filing these little cards by date helps attorneys remember to do crucial legal activities including trademark renewal, will updates, and motion filings. A specialized employee would oversee the distribution of the cards and the follow-up in bigger companies. For the sake of documentation, billing, and progress tracking, the card was used to record the status of each job directly. Making sure nothing fell through the cracks; it was an early method of managing workflow.  Eventually, a tickler file became the standard for this paradigm.   Which is an accordion-style file system with 43 individual folders.   These are still available for purchase at places like Amazon and office supply stores throughout the country.   Why 43 folders?   The 1-31st folder are for every day of the month; hence, if an assignment was due in a week, you would simply go to the current folder, count seven folders forward, and place the necessary follow-up note or letter in that folder.  The remaining twelve files are labeled with the months of the year, requiring you to do a follow-up every 90 days. Three months from now, you should simply slip the follow-up letter or task card into the appropriate folder. At the end of every month, you would go to next month’s folder and take everything that’s in that folder and put it in the appropriate date.

This is the fundamentally identical process for configuring Outlook's tasks, reminders, and follow-up emails. This may be made automatic by using a rule. The programs you're using likely offer a variety of options for handling follow-ups. I've included links to the most common customer relationship management systems and outlook to show you how they deal with these specific follow-up duties.

Mastering the art of task follow-up is crucial to excelling in technical sales.  Depending on the size of sales you have and how many deals you have in the pipeline along with prospects that you’re following up on.  Task management get out of hand very quickly. Once you’ve done an on-site visit, you have to take all the notes and devolve that into functional requirements. That’s a big set of tasks. There have one of those site visit summaries and deal summaries for every deal you have in the pipeline along with follow-ups that you owe other salespeople manager questions that have been asked during one of the other sales that are happening from other teammates, depending on your subject matter expertise you might get hammered with this all the time.

If we break this down into two basic categories a follow up items:

Bespoke E-mails and Tasks: Follow-ups that are personalized or bespoke for a particular contact or lead that are asks of certain questions, etc.  This is a huge area of innovation for companies like Microsoft right now where the Copilot sits in Outlook pulls all the relevant details from the email drafts a response for the specific email ask you to approve it and you push the send button. I’ll call this productivity enablement or draft automation.   Or emails are drafted automatically in your inbox in response to specific emails and tasks that you have there’s a lot of investment and innovation going on in the space right now and as this ages it’s going to get better and better.

Sales Driven Campaigns: Automated marketing follows a predetermined plan to convert prospects into leads by means of a series of pre-written tasks, correspondence, emails, e-books, etc.   It is common practice for marketing to assist with the planning and execution of campaigns, as well as the creation of visually appealing content, landing sites, and other related tasks.  However, in the long run, that lead will be transformed into a hot lead or warm lead and sent to a salesperson's inbox.  After receiving the contact information, the sales team will carry on with the campaign by gently personalizing responses, answering questions, and engaging with the prospect. The goal is to drive them to another call to action, which could be a meeting or a phone call, to further qualify them and potentially create an opportunity.  With either method, a salesperson may add a new prospect to their campaign while they're already during prospecting. This relieves the salesperson of the responsibility of managing the prospect's follow-up actions, or "ticklers," during the campaign's runtime (a few weeks or months). After someone visits the website, the system will send them a follow-up email three days later if they didn't click on the link; if they didn't click on the link, another email will be sent to them two days later.  These follow-up systems are great since they are automated in the background and allow you to customize pre-made templates without any effort after they are set up. Include your follow up information cause to action, etc. the real art in this is not the system that you’re using, but the actual content of the emails and the calls to action. Keep in mind that the substance and calls to action are what matter most, not the frequency or duration. It's important to be familiar with these basic ideas.

When you're beginning from square one, the conventional wisdom is that it takes around nine exposures before someone will pay attention to your message. After making it past spam and into the mailbox of the person in charge, the number of follow-up emails you must send every day can rapidly grow into an unmanageable mess.  So, learn the systems you're using and make them work for you; it will improve your ability to connect with people. Consider this: if you have 20 deals in the pipeline and a couple hundred leads, all of which came in at different times and days, managing the follow-up schedule for all of them is overwhelming for an individual. This is where automation comes in. Customer relationship management tools are a lifesaver in this battle. To make the most of them, follow these steps:

Ensure you have a clear understanding of the CRM's capabilities. Familiarize yourself with its reminder and automation features. These tools are designed to help you maintain a consistent follow-up routine without manual tracking. Set up automated reminders for each lead or customer based on the last interaction you had with them. Whether it's a call, an email, or an in-person meeting, your CRM should notify you when it's time to follow up.

Use the CRM's data to personalize your follow-ups. A generic reminder won't make as much of an impact as a message that references previous discussions or specific customer needs. Automation can help you here too. Many CRM systems allow you to create personalized templates that automatically include details from the customer's history with your company.

Record the outcome of your follow-ups in the CRM. This will not only help you keep track of the sales process but also enable your CRM's predictive analytics to better assist you in the future. Over time, as the CRM accumulates data on your interactions, it can suggest the most opportune times for follow-ups, increasing your chances of success.

Don’t rely solely on automation. Use the CRM to schedule time in your calendar for daily review of your follow-up tasks. This dedicated time allows you to prepare for meaningful interactions with your prospects and clients, ensuring that each follow-up is thoughtful and effective.

Remember, the goal is to use the CRM not just as a scheduling tool but as a strategic asset that enhances your sales technique, ensuring your follow-ups are as impactful as possible.

Make Outlook automation work for you.   Microsoft has spent years studying salespeople's preferred applications and has finally found one. It is not the CRM system, it is Outlook.  So Outlook has so many tools, addons, gadgets, and features now that make it easier to organize projects and send follow-up emails.  They spent hundreds of millions of dollars to build a new sales add-on called Copilot for Sales. It integrates Outlook with SFDC, or Microsoft’s own CRM software. The main reason they did this was to boost sales productivity utilizing AI in Outlook to Automate follow-ups.

To wrap this up the evolution of follow-up methods, from early 20th-century tickler cards to today’s sophisticated CRM systems, showcases how the core principles of organization and timely action remain essential in managing sales tasks. While technology has undoubtedly advanced, allowing for automation and personalization through CRM tools and platforms like Outlook, the real success lies in striking the right balance between efficiency and meaningful interaction. By mastering these tools, you can simplify your workflow, manage a high volume of tasks, and most importantly, build genuine connections with your prospects. Ultimately, it’s the content and the thoughtful engagement that will drive sales success. Embrace the systems, but always keep the focus on delivering value with every interaction.

Bonus Tip:

When sales professionals use automated follow-up methodologies effectively, they can see productivity gains of 20-30% on average, with some experienced users achieving up to 50% gains, depending on the automation level and CRM system integration. Here’s how these gains break down:

• Time Savings: Automation of follow-ups and reminders can save up to 15 hours per week by reducing the time spent on manual tracking and repetitive tasks.
• Improved Follow-Up Rate: Automated systems increase follow-up consistency by ensuring that no opportunities are missed. Sales reps using automation report a 30% improvement in their follow-up rates, which is key to moving prospects through the sales funnel.

Enhanced Personalization: With CRM automation, follow-ups can be tailored to each prospect based on their interaction history, improving engagement. Personalized follow-ups can lead to a 20-40% higher response rate, further increasing sales productivity.