The weekly sales habit essential to nurturing & closing more deals
There is a trend that I see time and time again in nearly all of the agencies and consultants that I work with.
They often get leads in some form or another.
But, they struggle to nurture and close those leads…
The reason?
They have no habit built to nurture and close those deals.
In this article, I am going to share with you a super simple nurture habit that takes 30 minutes each week. This habit will help you nurture more customers through to a close.
The Weekly Habit
To Summarize: Block out 30 minutes on your calendar each week to walk through every lead in your pipeline. Take an action on each lead to move them forward toward a sale OR clean them up and remove them from your pipeline.
First, build the foundation (CRM)
Before you can implement this weekly habit. The first thing you need to do is organize all of your leads into a CRM (Customer Relationship Manager).
A CRM can be as simple as an excel spreadsheet, or you can use a more complex software tool to manage your pipeline.
Some of my favorite CRM’s include:
The tool doesn’t matter as much as your commitment to using it. I use Pipedrive because it is so dead simple that I actually use it.
The first step of getting into this habit is to move all of your leads and opportunities into some sort of CRM so you can review them each week and easily update them.
The weekly habit - Dedicated follow up time
Once you have all of your leads organized in a CRM, the next step is to set aside at least 30 minutes per week to follow up with those leads.
Block this time out on your calendar, or it becomes easy to let this slip.
The actions you take in these 30 minute are very simple.
Step 1) Go through your CRM lead by lead
When you look at each lead ask “Is it still worth pursuing this lead?”
If no, remove them from your CRM, or drop them to a “On Hold” or “Lost” status
If yes, proceed to step 2.
Step 2) Take an action to nurture that lead
If you are waiting for a response to a proposal, next meeting time, etc. Then follow up with a short and sweet nudge email
If the lead is in a “Waiting period” or has been unresponsive to past emails then send over useful content, propose a collaboration or try to introduce the lead to a useful contact
For more on how to follow up, read The Art of following up with warm leads.
That is it.
This simple weekly process of going through your CRM, cleaning out the junk and taking actions on the positive leads will move the needle for your business and ensure you close more deals.
Too often, I see companies without this process just sit on a warm lead for over a month, because they forgot to follow up. By the time they circle back around, the lead has totally forgotten them or moved on past their need for the project.
By following up and engaging with prospects on a weekly basis, you keep yourself top of mind and keep the momentum of the deal moving forward.
This may seem trivial or obvious to some, but if you aren’t implementing this habit, then it can literally become a game changer for your business.
These 30 minutes per week remove a bottleneck in your sales process, and as a result, your % of deals closed increases and your business grows.
The bottom line
Set aside 30 minute per week to work through all of your leads.
Take action to follow up and nurture quality leads forward in your sales process.
Commit to this habit every single week.