How often should you contact prospects?

March 02, 2013 at 11:15 PM
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How often should you plan to contact prospects? After all, no one wants to feel like a pest or a nag. And you definitely don't want to be seen as desperate. I get asked this question all the time and here's my answer: much more often than you think.

You may think that calling or emailing every two weeks is reasonable. But, if you think about how crazy-busy people are, you'll realize that they don't remember what they deleted that morning, let alone two weeks ago. And, if you left a message that was less than stellar, your prospect probably deleted it so fast that your message never even entered their short-term memory.

So I suggest that you think about contacting your prospects every three to four days unless you have a very important trigger event occur. In such a situation, you may need to contact them frequently in the week following the event — especially if you have specific ideas that would be of use to them.

So don't worry about being a pest. If you were unfortunate enough to write a bad email message, chances are they don't remember it anyway.

And finally, just keep things moving. Prospects can't remember that you wrote them two days ago or called them three days ago. Contact your prospects often, and eventually you'll break through.

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Jill Konrath is the author of SNAP Selling and Selling to Big Companies. If you're struggling to set up meetings, click here to get a free Prospecting Tool Kit.

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