Day 438: on following up

sales

when i was frantically trying to learn as much as i could about b2b sales yesterday, i watched tyler bosmeny’s startup school talk called “how to sell”.

there were many gems in that talk, and one that especially stuck out came from this slide that shows the 2-month process that tyler went through to close a $100,000 contract:

the takeaway: he had to be persistent in following up even for people who wanted their solution

his advice was that if someone stops responding, don’t give up. instead, assume that they’re busy and continue following up (in a respectful way) until you either get a “yes” or a “no”

putting it into practice

here’s the sequence of events when i invite someone to the browserflow beta:

  1. i reach out to see if they’re interested in joining the beta for $20
  2. if they say yes, i send them a link to pay
  3. once they pay, they gain access to browserflow and the community slack

there’s a drop-off between 1 and 2, which is understandable — they’re probably not interested in paying to use browserflow (which is totally fine as the point of the payment is to filter for people who have a problem they care about enough to pay for a solution)

but i was confused to see a drop-off between steps 2 and 3. people would tell me they’re happy to pay, and then not do anything once i sent them the link to do so.

in the past, i would’ve assumed that they changed their minds and weren’t interested in joining anymore. i would’ve rationalized it by telling myself, “well, i want users who’d be super excited to try browserflow” and then just moved on.

but i decided to try out tyler’s advice and send a quick follow-up email that read:

Hey <name>,

Following up on this to see if you’re still interested in joining. Let me know if you have questions or need any help!

i sent it to two people who hadn’t responded in 3 days after initially telling me they were interested.

within an hour, both of them paid and signed up.

lessons learned:

  • if someone stops responding, assume that they’re busy
  • persistently follow up (respectfully) until you get a “yes” or “no”