Ryan Serhant explains the art of following up.
There are 3 F's.
1. Follow up
2. Follow through
3. Follow back
"Follow up forever. Until people buy, die, or don't want to work with you."
If you're losing deals that FEEL like they are a great fit and should buy, it's probably because you failed to get the customer to understand the true total VALUE your product will deliver.
The biggest value is often something their executives really care about (I call this an Exec Team Priority), like:
- New revenue they can't get better some other way
- REAL cost savings
- Security
- A key to a real Named Project at their company
- Time savings that reduce the need to add hires
- You get the idea... big stuff
Again, losing deals that FEEL winnable is very often downstream of failing to get your customer to see your product as delivering one of these outcomes.
I have Grok @bot check my email every 15 min and draft replies to anything that needs one.
Started by having Claude Opus 5.5 go through my email and write a style guide for my voice. Gave that to my bot.
I didn't edit this email at all. Quick read, hit send.
Other benefit is when I see the red "Draft" in my inbox I know it means it requires a reply.
@TechSalesGuy Yep. As a general rule, in my experience, the number of call recordings a new hire (or SDR > AE promo) listens to in their first few weeks is directly correlated with long term success in the role.
Virtually every AE has faced some version of:
"unfortunately our CXO wants us to take a few months and see what we can build in Claude before moving forward"
We're hosting a live 45 min workshop on how the best AEs handle this:
- Talk tracks
- Example visuals
- The best overall narrative we know
Next Tuesday at 12pm est
Sign up (free): https://t.co/65WhKivETD
Great lesson. Love sales examples from the real world.
Tech sales equivalent is when you're on a first call talking about how you'll solve a specific problem for the customer, just saying "here, I'll show you..." and sharing your screen for 30 seconds.
The retail rep at Buck Mason just pulled a great sales trick on me.
I asked about their Oxford shirts. They didn't have any on display, so he went into the back to grab them.
He came back out to the showroom and told me he's put them in the dressing room ready to try on. He didn't bring them to the showroom for me to see. He knows I'm most likely to buy if I try them on, so he made it as easy as possible for me to do so. "They're already in the dressing room ready for you."
I try them on, love one of them, and buy it.
Reminder to always make it as easy as possible for someone to buy from you.
If you're in sales and you've been following up on the same email thread 2-3x and you're getting ghosted send your next email on a brand new thread and pretend like absolutely nothing is wrong. Totally run of the mill communication.
Almost never fails (if it's a real deal).
Cold call openers: the main goal of the “opener” is just to create the most organic possible opportunity for you to give a quick pitch and see if it’s interesting to them.
For example: “Bill, it’s Isaiah calling from Repeatability… how are ya?”
Them: “Gooood… sorry, from where?”
Boom.
Opportunity to say the most compelling two lines I can possibly muster about my product (getting THIS right is the actual hard part).
@ImAntCalabrese Issue w this approach that I see is that evvvveryone is doing a version of it so it becomes a pattern that customers learn to filter out
@therealDakBrown Sooooo situational. That's a solid formula for a summary after a call (though I think this formula is pretty much a commodity now due to AI and not that impactful).
In the original message I'm actually talking more about follow-ups AFTER the first message.
If you’re in sales you need to be careful with your follow ups to not build a pattern about YOURSELF with your customer.
Like you don’t want to send tons of crappy follow ups such that they start to think “man this guy is really annoying, I’m just gonna auto archive him anytime I see his name.”
I think focusing too much on "cost" so early in your career is the wrong mindset for a salesperson. And not sure about standing out either. How do you mean? Being a true top rep anywhere will make you stand out, but NYC has way more opportunities to stand out, more opportunities to meet interesting people, meet customers in person, etc.
You think? I see lots of good team using the tools to have less task work to do, be sharper on calls (perfect memory), and find extra opps, but they're all also as focused on the craft as they've ever been.
For example, the highest performing BDR team I know has seen a MASSIVE increase in meetings:day:bdr due to AI-assisted automation (better lists, more dials, etc) while ALSO being deep in the lab on improving their calls.