Strategies for Effective Follow-Up at Touchpoints

Here's exactly how I structure my follow-ups to stop deals from slipping or ghosting at the last minute. Buyers ask themselves 5 crucial questions before they spend money. So we match our follow ups to each different question of the buying journey. The questions: 1/ "Do we Have a Problem or Goal that we Urgently need help with?" Follow up examples: Thought Leadership emphasizing the size / importance of the problem. Things like articles from Forbes, McKinsey, HBR or an industry specific publication. Screenshots, summations or info-graphics. NOT LINKS. No one reads them. 2/ "What's out there to Solve the Problem? How do Vendors differ?" Follow up examples: Sample RFP templates with pre-filled criteria. Easy to read buying guides. Especially if written by a 3rd party. 3/ "What Exactly do we need this Solution to do? Who do we feel good about?" Follow up examples: 3 bullets of criteria your Buyers commonly use during evaluations (especially differentiators.) Here's example wording I've used at UserGems 💎: "Thought you might find it helpful to see how other companies have evaluated tools to track their past champions. Their criteria are usually: *Data quality & ROI potential *Security (SOC2 type 2 and GDPR) *How easy or hard is it to take action: set up/training, automation, playbooks Cheers!" 4/ "Is the Juice worth the Squeeze - both $$$ & Time?" Follow up examples: Screenshots of emails, texts or DMs from customers talking about easy set up. Love using ones like the Slack pictured here. Feels more organic and authentic than a marketing case study. 5/ "What's next? How will this get done?" Follow up examples: Visual timelines Introductions to the CSM/onboard team Custom/short videos from CSM leadership When we tailor our follow ups to answer the questions our Buyers are asking themselves - Even (especially!) the subconscious ones Our sales cycles can be smoother, faster and easier to forecast. Buyer Experience > Sales Stages What's your best advice for how to follow up? ps - If you liked this breakdown, join 6,000+ other sellers getting value from my newsletter. Details on my website!

Here's a lil secret about “check in" or cadence calls with your customers. Many of us were taught that these touchpoints are to understand how the customer is using our product, address any issues, and identify expansion opportunities. Here's the fatal flaw in that theory. Your customer hasn't woken up thinking about your product today. They're not sitting around wondering how to use more of your features. And they certainly haven't assembled a list of needs for you to solve. They have a job, with a job description and priorities they need to execute. So, at best they think of your product maybe 40% of their. At worst its 0%. So, how could we approach customer discovery in a constant fashion? 1 - Build a hypothesis on what business objectives this account is trying to achieve this quarter/year, and seek to understand what you're missing as an outsider. Find this in their latest earnings call, leadership announcements, press releases about new initiatives. Bring it to the call, and frame it as, "This is what I can observe from my research - what did I miss?" 2 - Be curious about HOW your champion currently believes they will accomplish those goals, and seek to understand HOW they formed that opinion. Example: Company's goal is to reduce customer acquisition costs by 30%. Your champion believes they need better lead scoring. They believe this because Marketing keeps sending "bad leads" to Sales. 3 - Introduce evidence that contradicts those beliefs/assumptions. Our goal isn't to tell them they're wrong. It's to introduce an insight that reveals a crack in their thinking. "We analyzed 200 companies in your industry and found the ones with the lowest CAC actually focus first on conversion rate optimization, not lead scoring." 4 - Give them a formula to calculate the implications of continuing with their current approach. This is NOT about your ROI. This is about the cost of continuing down their current path. Always tie this back to a P&L impact: increased costs, decreased revenue, or missed growth opportunities that affect the bottom line. Make it concrete, not conceptual. 5 - If you've piqued their curiosity, suggest that they collect the inputs needed to calculate the size of the problem, and bring those to the next call. Don't jump to how your solution helps yet. Just agree that you'll explore the size of the opportunity together. Customer success calls shouldn't feel like a product usage review or a veiled sales pitch. They should feel like two colleagues looking at the business landscape together, with you bringing outside perspective they can't see from within. The most valuable CS teams don't just ensure adoption—they impact their customer's P&L. When your discovery connects directly to revenue growth, cost reduction, or margin improvement, you transform from a vendor contact to a strategic advisor. What would happen if your CS team approached discovery this way?

The day after a customer onsite, you should call each person that you met with and do the following: 1. Thank them 2. Ask for feedback Use these conversations to: 1. Set additional demos/meetings (set multiple next steps in parallel, do not do them in linear fashion unless you want to slow down your deal) 2. Learn where you stand in the evaluation 3. Figure out who at the company actually has influence on the decision-making process If you do this right you'll go from having 1 main contact at an account to having multiple relationships driving your deal forward. You can even run this play on virtual demos if there is a big group. Big team meetings can be one of your best multithreading tools if you take this follow-up approach.

Stop obsessing over onboarding. That’s not where the real risk lies. We’ve spent years optimizing our onboarding, mapping workflows, implementing best practices, enabling users and conducting trainings. But something wasn’t adding up. We recently went deep into our customer data, analyzing behavior patterns tied to long-term adoption, success and ROI. Turns out, the most successful customers, they had 3 things in common and they weren’t just things we taught in onboarding. They were things they did consistently after onboarding. That’s when it hit us: The real risk isn’t in onboarding. It’s in what happens next. Because here’s what we see too often: We start with a strong cadence, weekly touchpoints, sometimes more. We’re present. We’re proactive. And then… onboarding ends. Suddenly that cadence drops ... now it's bi-weekly, monthly or quarterly. Or worse, ad hoc. We lose momentum. Change management falls apart. The behaviors that drive long-term success? They never take root. So we’re flipping the script. We’re going all-in on the first 90 days post onboarding, helping customers orchestrate change, drive adoption, and build habits that last. Here’s how you can start doing the same: ✅ Get clear on behavior-based milestones What does early success look like? Map signals that indicate your customers are on track. ✅ Double down on the 90–120 days post-onboarding Don’t pull back. Keep the momentum going with consistent engagement and value delivery. ✅ Coach customers through change management They aren’t experts in transformation, you are. Be their guide, not just their support. Because CS doesn’t end with implementation. That’s where it begins. If you want stronger retention, stop treating onboarding as the finish line. It’s just the starting block. What’s your post-onboarding strategy look like?

𝗙𝗼𝗹𝗹𝗼𝘄-𝘂𝗽 𝗶𝘀 𝘄𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝟵𝟬% 𝗼𝗳 𝘀𝗮𝗹𝗲𝘀 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝘄𝗼𝗻—𝗼𝗿 𝗹𝗼𝘀𝘁. In MedTech sales, the real test begins after the first sales conversation. HCPs are busy. Committees get delayed. Priorities shift. If your “follow-up” is just 𝘤𝘩𝘦𝘤𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘪𝘯 with, “Did you have a chance to review...?” …you’ve already lost. Great follow-up isn’t about nagging. It’s about 𝘢𝘥𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘷𝘢𝘭𝘶𝘦: ➡️ Send an article that speaks directly to a concern they raised. ➡️ Reframe their hesitation into a patient-centered question: “How would this impact outcomes for the next 10 cases?” ➡️ Anticipate roadblocks before they bring them up. ➡️ Keep them updated with relevant information on the product and ways to buy it. Here’s the part most reps miss: follow-up is where trust compounds—or erodes. Each touchpoint tells the customer whether you’re a partner or a pest. In my book, 𝙈𝙖𝙨𝙩𝙚𝙧𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙈𝙚𝙙𝙞𝙘𝙖𝙡 𝙎𝙖𝙡𝙚𝙨 – 𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝙀𝙫𝙤𝙡𝙪𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣, I call follow-up “the graveyard where good opportunities go to die.” MedTech reps who master follow-up are the ones who quietly dominate their markets. 𝗕𝗮𝗱 𝗳𝗼𝗹𝗹𝗼𝘄-𝘂𝗽 𝗶𝘀 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝘀𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝗻 𝗻𝗼 𝗳𝗼𝗹𝗹𝗼𝘄-𝘂𝗽. 𝗔𝗴𝗿𝗲𝗲 𝗼𝗿 𝗱𝗶𝘀𝗮𝗴𝗿𝗲𝗲? _______________________________ Did you know I send out weekly message with insight and hacks for medical sales professionals? It's called, "The Medical Sales Minute." Sign up for free. Link in bio "About" section.

I just reviewed a follow up email that made me want to delete my LinkedIn account. After an incredible discovery call where the rep: → Uncovered $500K in annual losses → Identified specific pain points → Built genuine rapport with the prospect He sent this follow up: "Hi John, following up on our conversation. Any thoughts on next steps?" I'm not joking. That was the entire email. This rep went from trusted advisor to desperate vendor in one sentence. Here's what he should have sent instead: "John, Based on our conversation about the $500K you're losing annually due to deployment delays, I've put together a brief overview of how we've helped similar companies reduce this impact by 80%. Given the scope of this challenge, when can we get your CFO involved to discuss the business case? Best regards, [Rep name]" The difference is night and day: ❌ Weak follow up: "Any thoughts on next steps?" ✅ Strong follow up: References specific problem + demonstrates value + advances the sale Your follow up emails should sell, not beg. Every touchpoint is an opportunity to: → Reinforce the problems you uncovered → Show how you solve them → Move the deal forward Stop wasting these golden opportunities with generic, desperate sounding messages. Use what you learned in discovery to craft follow-ups that advance the sale. Your prospects are drowning in "just checking in" emails. Be the one who stands out by referencing real business impact. — Reps! Here’s 5 simple follow up strategies to close seals faster and to minimize ghosting: https://lnkd.in/gJRJwzsN