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6 Tips for Effective Phone Follow UP
By Austin Akalanze
Follow ups are essential in building relationships, whether business or otherwise. Phone follow ups are by far the most common way to follow up in the offline world. Online, email follow ups are the norm. Follow ups, whether by phone, email or text messages can become a drudgery if not done properly. Worst still, is not doing any follow ups at all. While email follow ups are by far the quickest and easiest, they are no longer as effective as they once were, and need be enhanced with a phone follow up or a text messaging follow up. How often have you made what might have been an important business contact and intended to do a phone follow up with them and never got to it. We have all been there and the fault usually is not from us, right?. Let's face it there are only 24 hours in the day and you can only do so much. In the process, one day turns into one week and then into one month and on and on. In the end, the call never gets made and you just lost a potential client or customer. Now to be perfectly honest, time is not the only thing stopping us from doing a phone follow up with our prospective clients. Others include not being confident in ourselves or not knowing what to say. But here are some tips to help you in the all important task of following up with your contacts by phone. Why are you calling? The first thing is to be clear in your mind why you are making this phone follow up call. This can easily be determined by what happened during your initial contact. What was said and what was agreed on. Was there a question the needed to be answered? What was this person in need of? How can you help meet that need. Pick a good time to do your follow ups. The best time to do a phone follow up is not after you have just had a fight with your spouse or significant other. Pick a more suitable time. Think about the call you are getting ready to make, what is so good about it. Think about all the positive things about this call. The point is build up your positive side. Do whatever it takes to keep a positive attitude for the duration of the call. Let them hear a smile in your voice. Always think how you can best meet their needs while serving your purpose. A note is helpful, keep one handy. Notes are just that- notes. They are only there to help if we stumble. A note should contain your talking or bullet points. Make your talking points brief and be familiar enough with them to avoid being overly dependent and sounding like you are reading from a script. Always begin your phone follow up with a short introduction of yourself. Then tell them why you are calling. Remember the person you are talking to wants to know what is in it for him. Listen and learn. You are in a conversation, treat it like so. You phone follow up is a conversation. In a conversation, two parties are involve. So when you speak, pause and listen and let the other party have a chance to respond. Always keep your purpose in mind. Redirect if necessary but let the other person's responses guide the direction of the call. Why is this important? This is important because in the discovery stage, listening and following their lead allows you to hone in on their needs and be in a better position to offer services that would fill those needs well. Do not pretend to be someone else. Be who you are. Often times we forget that the person at the other end is another individual like us. They to have needs. They often times have families and responsibilities to meet. Just be yourself. Let them know you are a real person, who share similar attribute as they and wants to connect with them in order to help them solve this need that they have. Evaluate and arrange a come back as needed. Evaluate your phone follow up and make adjustment as you go. Always remember to arrange a come back. Ask yourself where do we go from here? It is not only important that you know what is the next thing to do. It is equally important that your party also knows the same. Be sure both of you are on the same page on that. If your next step is another phone follow up, be sure both of you understand that. Make sure the date and time are clear and understood.
Austin Akalanze is a seasoned writer. He enjoys watching new technologies like the new Phone Follow Up System that puts your phone follow up on autopilot . He has expert author status at Ezinearticles.
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http://akanett.phonefollowup.com
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This intel was contributed by akanett
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May, 2012
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