The Ideal Meeting Follow Up Template
Sending a follow up email after an important sales meeting is a puzzle for even the most experienced sales reps. Follow these ten steps to create sales follow up messages that help you close more deals:
2.6x Deal Conversion by Sending in the First Hour
Place yourself in the shoes of your prospect just for one moment….
For any B2B purchase, we now investigate an average of 7 different options before coming to a purchase decision.
That is 7 different Account Executives, 7 SDRs and a host of auto responders vying for the prospect’s attention
In this situation, you should aim to make your follow ups as personal, value driven and timely as possible
Record your screen and send it as a link
Summarizing the findings from the meeting is a key step as we will discuss later on, however what can be more helpful for the prospect is to actually relieve the experience at their own leisure
In addition to the full recording - taken from a client like Zoom or a call coaching tool like Chorus.ai or Gong.io - it can be helpful to cut the key moments into a short video (no longer than two minutes)
This way the prospect doesn’t have to navigate 60 minutes of video to find a few minutes of value & can share the learnings immediately amongst peers
Reference the next meeting date & time
Often we are so focused on the meeting at hand we forget that we are often several meetings away from the close.
As you reach the designated time limit - don’t forget to firmly set the next appointment date and send the calendar invite before the meeting you are currently in ends!
On top of this, don’t forget to use statements which reference future activities like:
“We will talk about this in our next meeting”
“Can you send me those figures before our call next week?
Divide your summary into goals, how we can help & next steps
Dividing your summary notes into a three part table is an effective method to clarify the findings.
Please see this example below:
3 “WOW” Moments in the Words of the Prospect
In addition to the summary table above - which contains the findings and next steps in “our” words as the salesperson, an unorthodox technique to increase the effectiveness of your meeting follow ups is to select three quotes from the prospect in “their” own words.
This helps to reaffirm the idea that proceeding with your product/service originates in their own mind
Create a space for collaboration
When we send follow up notes and materials after a meeting - we expect a two way interaction despite giving the customer no other mechanism to reach out other than a call, email or virtual meeting.
You can increase the strength and frequency of two-way interactions by sharing slides, docs or sheets which allow the prospect to add their own notes and record their findings even as they explore other vendors
Cater to the 3 Types of Learner
Remember that your follow ups need to avoid too much text and combine approaches for the three different types of learner:
Numerical
Have your provided ROI estimations based on data gathered?
Do you have any realistics statistics that demonstrate expected improvement?
Visual
Animated GIFs showing product features
Process maps
Feature breakdowns
Practical
Interactive online trials
How-to-videos
Try to avoid rushing into pricing
A customer proceeds when they believe perceived value is greater than the price. In sales, we want to avoid decreasing the price where possible so the only remaining avenue is to focus on showcasing value.
This is a time dependent process - thus premature negotiations will most likely result in the prospect undervaluing your offering & thinking it is overpriced.
To increase perceived value focus on the current cost of inaction, cost savings compared to existing solutions/alternatives & ROI impacts of improvements that can be made with your solution
Follow up in 48 hours with something of benefit
After we place a great deal of effort into our meeting summary materials - our approach in the days that follow can often be limited to phrases like Did you receive what I sent over? or How are you going - What were your thoughts?
Instead of a generic “reminder” message your job should be to offer new insights in the first 48 hours following a key meeting - channelling specific pains or answering questions posed by the customer.
Examples you can create include walkthrough videos, blog articles, ebooks and interviews with other pros. The best content you can send is your own - helping to build your personal brand
Use this meeting follow up email template
For feedback on our deals - we look to our internal management for coaching. However the greatest judge of our sales performance is somebody we don’t often talk to - the customer.
After every meeting, try sending the template below. The response rate may be less than 10% yet when you do receive answers they can help uncover where you stand in the deal by giving you insight on many unknowns
If you have spare budget, you can also experiment with offering $5-$10 as an incentive to anyone who completes the exercise
Dear Customer,
Thank you for taking the time to meet with me today. Click here to find a summary of the deck I presented as well as notes about our conversation.
I'd also appreciate you took two minutes to answer the following questions to help me continually improve the experience for you:
What content did you find beneficial?
What could I have elaborated more on?
How was this compared to conversations you've had with similar vendors in the last 12 months?
If you had to give this meeting a rating between 1-10, with 10 being amazing - what would you give it & why?
