Copious notes on each sales call and meeting should be kept in your contact manager, so you can gauge the effectiveness of your sales process and use that information to tailor your future messages.
Call clients back in a reasonable amount of time after meetings or send letters and faxes, so they don’t forget you. Ask for good days and times to do follow-ups if they are generally hard to contact and ask gatekeepers for the same information.
You must follow-up thoroughly on leads or else all the time and money used on your background and introductory work is wasted, and all leverage is lost! But reprioritize follow-ups according to your perception of the prospect’s likelihood of bearing fruit. In this case, your contact manager (often SalesForce.com and SugarCRM are the best modern tools) once again proves to be critical, particularly its calendar functions.
