Still opening your sales follow-up calls with, “I’m just following up”?
Following up after sending a quote can feel awkward—especially when you don’t know what the customer is thinking or which way they’re leaning.
Instead of making another generic follow-up call, this episode shares a simple three-question framework to create better conversations, uncover objections, and keep your deals moving forward.
In this episode you’ll discover:
- How to replace the dreaded “just following up” line with a more natural and productive sales conversation.
- The two questions that help customers reveal exactly what they liked—and what may be stopping them from saying yes.
- How one powerful final question can uncover the customer’s next move and help you confidently guide the deal forward.
Play this episode to learn the three simple questions that can turn awkward follow-up calls into meaningful conversations that help you close more deals.
Take our Free Quote Quiz now to Kickstart Your Sales Growth
Sales & Marketing Workshops with Ben Wright:
https://space.1111studios.com.au/workshops-waitlist
To see how we’ve helped business grow their sales:
Or email Ben if you would like to get in touch: hello@strongersalesteams.com
This podcast helps the entrepreneur, founder, CEO, and business owner in the trade, construction and industry segments, regain focus, build confidence, and achieve measurable results through powerful sales training, effective sales strategy, and expert sales coaching—guiding every sales leader, sales manager, and sales team in mastering the sales process, optimizing the sales pipeline, and driving business growth while fostering leadership, balance, and freedom amidst overwhelm, stress, and potential burnout, creating lasting peace of mind and smarter decision making for every California business and Australia business ready to scale up with excellence in sales management , through refined sales processes, proven trade sales techniques, and strategic sales leadership that strengthens sales process execution, accelerates sales team development, builds stronger sales teams, improves time management for sales, drives resilience and results, increases team results across the construction industry and wider industry sales sectors, and supports sustainable trading growth that continues to drive results through an effective management process in modern trade sales.
Episode Transcript:
Ben Wright:
The least effective follow-up line with a customer is, I’m just calling to follow up, yet we’ve all done it. So how do we get around it to have real impact when we’re following up with our customers?
Intro:
Welcome to Trade Sales Made Simple, the show helping seven to eight figure trade, construction and industry leaders finally end the stress of inconsistent sales by simplifying your sales systems so that you can close more deals and grow faster.
I’m your host, Ben Wright and over the last 15 years, I’ve helped hundreds of trade and sales leaders grow their businesses and generate over $200 million in additional revenue by simplifying their sales processes.
Let’s get started.
Ben Wright:
. In this episode, we are going to go through the three steps that you can use instead of the dreaded just following up phone call line that most of us, no, I’m going to say all of us have used at some point in our sales career. We know when we’re following up, we’re often busy.
We’re not sure what to say because we have our quote in front of our customer, but we’re not quite certain what they want to do next. And whilst we can spend lots of time saying, well, the most important thing actually to make that follow-up process smooth is to get really clear with our customers early around what they need to do to get the project moving forward, sometimes we get to the point where we do just have to make those phone calls and we’re not quite sure which way a customer is going to lean to. And look, for me, absolutely, no doubt, I have made, I was going to say dozens, but hundreds of those calls where I’m saying I’m just following up because it’s the easy option to do and quite frankly, quite often, I actually didn’t know what to say as I was going through my sales career.
However, over the last five or six years in particular, as I’ve been doing a lot of work around strategy and coaching and training sales teams, what’s become really clear to me is that there’s a really obvious substitute and in fact, I call it a trade-up from the phone call of just following up that can be just as open and can, in my opinion, work significantly more effectively than that just follow-up phone call. So, what does it look like? We’re going to go through these three questions that I’m seeing really good sales people and really good sales teams ask in their own way, right, in their own versions when they are calling up customers or meeting with customers post that quote period to try and keep momentum in their deals, to try and keep their deals moving and step them forward. So, the three questions go something like this.
First question is what do you like? Hey, it’s Ben here from the Sold Out Sales Teams Academy. Have you got a moment? Yes, fantastic, great. First thing I wanted to ask you is what did you like from the proposal that we put forward? What worked for you? What are the things that most landed with you? What resonated with you? What are the parts of the proposal that you said, yeah, I’m definitely into? Right, there’s a few different ways of asking it in there.
But what we’re doing here is we are opening up with our customer the opportunity for them to say, hey, here’s what I like. It’s a really nice positive way to start a phone call and it avoids that situation of the just following up phone call where it can get a little bit awkward when the customer really isn’t sure what to do next, right, or simply hasn’t had the time to go through what you’ve presented to them. So, the first question I love, what do you like? And hopefully what comes from that is that they love the scope of works you put forward.
They love the product. They love the service. They love the general direction of where you’ve gone with it.
Fantastic. We’re going to say, okay, great. So, we like A, B, and C from our proposal.
But then, of course, that doesn’t necessarily step the deal forward but it is a beautiful way for us to start the call in a positive manner. So, rolling into the second question from there. So, fantastic.
I acknowledge that you liked the pricing. You liked the speed of delivery and you liked the products we’re using. What didn’t you like? What didn’t land with you? Is there anything in there that’s going to get in the way? Was there anything across the scope of works that’s going to be a challenge for you? Any part of the quote that you weren’t quite sure on? Anything that we need to do better? Anything that we’ve left out? Anything we need to add into the quote? Lots of different ways of asking that same question there that’s essentially asking the customer, okay, what’s getting in the way of you saying yes? Now, it doesn’t necessarily cover things outside of your quote that are getting in the way, i.e., that they’re still discussing the pros and the cons and so forth between them, you know, two people or a board or whatever it may be.
But what it does do is it really clearly gives the customer a chance to say, hey, this is the part of the quote. This is the part of the scope of works that didn’t quite meet my expectations. And for you, an even better opportunity to say, great, thank you for letting me know.
You didn’t like how long this was going to take us to deliver. Are you open for us workshopping? Are you open to us looking at different ways of doing things? Are you open for us to re-look at it and see if we can find something that’s going to land better for you? Right, we are then getting that opportunity to say to the customer, hey, can we fix this? Can we have another chance here so that we can absolutely pinpoint exactly what you’re looking for? And in my experience, and certainly that of a huge number of salespeople that I work with, is that when you can be clear on what you like, so you get the customer to acknowledge exactly what they did like in your proposal, and then resolve things they didn’t like, we’re naturally stepping the deal forward. We’re naturally getting to a point where the customer is more confident to say yes, where they wouldn’t have been in the past.
Now, I’ve spoken quite a bit over the last couple of weeks around what we do when we’re 50-50 on deals. Things like following up, right, the ghosting pace we had in episode 268, for example. The pace around not following up and losing those 50-50 deals in episode 265.
Right, we’ve gone through a lot of those. What I really like around this and this theme we’re following here and getting your follow-up on point is that when we have our customer articulate what they like, but also articulate what they don’t like and fix it, we’re in a far better position than if we made that I’m just following up call, and of course, we’re in even a further more positive position than if we didn’t make the call at all. So, question number one, what do you like? Question number two, what don’t you like? And some back and forward to resolve those issues to hopefully get to a point where they’ve been solved.
And then question three, my favorite question, what would you like to do next? Now, that question is followed by a pause, a closing of the mouth, nothing else being said, and just waiting for what the customer is going to say next. Because when we give them an opportunity to say, okay, here’s what I’d like to do next. Based on you solving these issues, we can move forward.
I still need to talk to my partner. I still need to talk to my GM. I’ve got a couple more quotes coming in that I need to work through.
We then from there get to work through, okay, so based on what you’re saying you’d like to do next, how about we then get back in touch on this date and do this job? So, how about we then get back in touch next week and we go through if any other issues have arisen from your competitor quotes? How about we catch up before you speak to your partner or your GM? Or even better, would you like me to catch up with you when you’re together and save you having to worry about going through everything in the quote? I can do that for you. Would you like me to prepare a video note for them? What it does is when we know what the customer wants to do next, it allows us to take control of the football and really importantly, step the deal forward. So, they’re the three questions that are far in advance of that just follow-up phone call with a customer.
They avoid that really awkward moments of pauses when you hand over from, hey, I’m just following up, see where you got to with our proposal, to a really nice smooth flowing conversation that more importantly steps the deal forward because we’re working through where we perhaps didn’t nail our initial quote. Now, as you’re working through in your mind what you want to do here, well, this is a really straightforward one and that is to work with your team or yourself to drop the just following up call and roll these three lines into your post-sale follow-up process. What do you like? What don’t you like? And what would you like to do next? This is a really nice moment to change in your business because if you’re looking to grow and you’re quoting a lot but you’re not getting the conversion rates, then these are the exact type of questions that can do it and hopefully, we’re then getting you to close more deals which means you’re having to quote less which means you’re not having to work as hard which is less stressful which is more money in the bank and it continues.
So, we’ve got our new programs rolling out in the next couple of months. Some of these are going to be free but they are going to be by waitlist only. So, you need to jump onto that if you’d like to know more and get lots more like this, lots more what do you like, what don’t you like and what do you want to do next.
You can jump on the link through our show notes. It’s quick and easy to do but you need to be on there if you want to know when the programs are coming out. So, that’s it for today.
Please keep thinking about how you can be 1% better each and every day because it does make all the difference.