Clear, consistent follow-up is crucial to the sales process. You need to stay in touch with your leads and customers and build relationships to ultimately close deals. However, crafting clear and compelling follow-ups can be challenging. 

Well-written follow-up texts and emails help you keep buyers engaged and moving through the sales funnel. You close more deals and increase your revenue. But  poorly written messages harm your chances of success because people ignore you instead.

In this blog post, we’ll:

• explore the key elements of crafting clear sales follow-up texts
• provide tips and strategies for writing messages people will reply to
• share text message templates for making the most of this powerful communication tool

Elements of Clear Sales Follow-up Texts

When writing your sales follow-up texts, carefully include these four elements.

1. Personalization

Personalizing your follow-up texts helps you build relationships and trust with your leads and customers. Personalization includes using the recipient’s name, referencing lead/customer data and analytics (previous conversations, interactions, or purchases), and tailoring the messages to the recipient’s specific needs or interests.

2. Clarity

Your follow-up texts should be easy to understand. Avoid using sales jargon or technical terms that your leads and customers may not be familiar with. Cut out unnecessary words or phrases that might confuse or distract leads and customers from the main purpose you’re texting them. Instead, use simple, straightforward language that won’t be misunderstood. 

3. Value

Always provide value in conversations with your leads and customers, especially when texting. This means providing information or updates relevant to their needs or interests, offering special deals or promotions, and providing helpful tips or advice. Value-focused texts feel relevant to each lead/customer, elicit more engagement, and get responses from the recipients. 

4. Call-to-action 

Include a clear call-to-action to increase engagement. Be specific about what you want the recipient to do and why they should do it. For example, you could ask for a meeting or phone call, encourage the recipient to visit your website or social media pages, or ask for feedback or a review.

Depending on the situation, create a sense of urgency by setting a deadline or using time-sensitive language in your call-to-action. Offering something for a “limited time only” helps create a sense of excitement and encourages the recipient to act quickly.

Tips and Strategies for Writing Clear Sales Follow-up Texts

Use our tips and strategies for crafting clear sales follow-up texts to build relationships, provide value to leads/customers, and close more deals:

1. Use a Template

Using a template makes it easy to craft clear and effective follow-up texts. Your template should include all of the key elements of clear sales follow-up texts as mentioned above (personalization, clarity, value, and a call-to-action). By using message templates, you and/or your team save time and instead focus on conversations with customers, holding consultations/demos, and actually selling.

2. Keep it Short and Sweet

Sales follow-up texts should be short and to the point. Avoid writing long, rambling messages (that’s what emails are for). Long texts result in low engagement because they are harder for customers to read and understand. 

To keep your messages short, start with the most important information first and avoid adding unnecessary details or filler content that detracts from the main purpose of the message. Limit your messages to no more than two or three sentences.

3. Be Consistent

Consistency is critical when it comes to follow-up. Follow up with your leads and customers regularly and use the same tone and language in all of your texts. Follow-ups almost always require multiple points of contact to get a reply. One way to make sure you are following up consistently is to use Skipio’s drip campaigns, which helps you automatically reach out to your contacts multiple times and stay top of mind. 

4. Test and Refine

Test and refine your sales follow-up texts. Track your response rates and click rates in particular, making small adjustments to your messages. Change your word choice, length of text, send time/frequency, with/without links, etc. This helps you identify areas for improvement and make data-driven decisions about your messaging strategy. 

By testing and refining your approach over time, you create a more effective and efficient follow-up strategy that generates more leads, conversions, and revenue.

Examples of Effective Sales Follow-up Texts

Now that we’ve discussed the “how” of  crafting clear sales follow-up texts, check out these examples of effective follow-up texts. Use our templates as inspiration for your own sales efforts.

• Hi [First Name], any questions about the (specific product/service) we discussed? Just text me and if it needs more explanation we can schedule a call for later this week.
• Hi [First Name], just emailed that document I mentioned yesterday. Would it help to see a comparison with (other product/service/option)?
• Hey [First Name], thoughts on the initial (proposal/quote/contract)? Anyone else we need to get on board?
• Hi [First Name], it’s been (time frame) since you last (scheduled/purchased) our (specific product/service). (Buy/schedule) with this link and I can get you a loyalty discount: (link)
• Hi [First Name], we talked about (specific product/service) but would it be helpful to see (related product/service) for more context? It can really help with (specific use case/pain point).
• Hey [First Name], you wanted more info on (specific product/service). What specifically would you want to see in a (demo/consultation)? Then we can schedule for later this week.

Clarity and Consistency = More Sales

The goal of sales follow-up is to communicate your message clearly and concisely to encourage your potential buyers to take action. Texting gives you a personal way to establish connections and follow up with more consistency and clarity.

Get the tools and guidance to write and send clear, effective messages to prospects and customers with Skipio. Take a 5-minute tour to see how Skipio naturally fits into your sales follow-up.