When it comes to sales, the sales you are putting on the books today are the income and your sales pipeline and customer list is your equity. Income today gets spent tommorow, but a solid pipeline is something that you can tap into in the future because you have laid the foundation for a potential relationship. The problem that most salespeople have, though, is that there is not enough time in the day to keep the sales cycle going with people that seemingly have no interest to purchase at any point in the future. Why spend time and resources devoted to a relationship which may or may not pan out when there are active deals you are working right now?

Well, there is an effective way to do both. Nobody will ever be able to convince me that a salesperson is too busy to spend 10 minutes a day touching base with those prospects that, if landed, would become high value customers. If you can't find time to put a phone call in to a business owner to keep the sales cycle moving, then you need to rethink your position. After your top level prospects, it does get a little tougher to find time to make the phone calls to keep you on their mind.

That's where direct mail follow-up comes into play. The internet has made it so much easier to stay in touch with customers on a semi-automated way. Some high level CRM Programs even send out your monthly follow-up automatically at a predetermined schedule. But even if you wanted to do it the 'low tech' way, you could just create your spreadsheet of prospects, type up your monthly letter, and then merge the names in to somewhat automate the process. Better yet, there are some companies that will allow you to send greeting cards from your desktop and write a personalized note that gets sent through the US mail. These personal touches in an automatic way can help build the relationship with your prospects when you have too much on your plate to put a phone call in.

So, we all know that follow up in sales is key but nobody seems to do it. With the advancements in technology, it has made follow-up exteremely easy for sales professionals. My advice would be to write out your plan of follow-up with your prospects and then work the plan. You will absolutely see great results and when it comes time to put a phone call into those prospects, you will be thankful that you kept the sale going through direct mail.