How not to follow up on a lead
 

Got an email this morning. Really irritated me. This is all it said.

"Please provide the professional courtesy of an update on the ........... project we quoted for you.

Thank you

Guys name
At Company"

Professional courtesy of an update......? You'd think I'd been running the guy in circles wasting his time generating a quote for me that I simply ignored/never acknowledged.

The company name sounded vaguely familiar but I knew that I had never requested a quote on the type of project he was referring to.

So I responded to the guy that I thought his email was a bit obnoxious and that I had no idea what project quote he was referring to.

5 minutes later he calls and I'm in a meeting so I tell reception I have no idea what project the guy is calling about, sounds like a cold call and I don't have time for it.

He then sends me an email telling me that he is following up on an April request for a demo of their software that i had already downloaded.

Search my mail and sure enough I did make the request, in April of 2010. Over a year ago.

He goes on to say he's never had anyone react negatively to his approach.

I responded to him that more than likely he has had far more negative reactions to his approach than he thinks, just no one took the time to tell him.

Am I wrong?

The email was obnoxious. I'd have just ignored it and his calls.

If you requested info and he has made numerous contacts with no reply then he might have a reason to use a line like that when there is nothing to lose. If that was his first contact then he's way out of line.

spot on...

Sounds like he was following up on dead deals from a former sales rep? Was he the same rep who initially sent you the demo? If he was and is only now following up he's not doing his job. A year from initial contact makes that opportunity a warm lead at best. Personally I followup consistently within the 1st 90 days, after that I move on, a year later reflects poorly on the sales rep and his abilities. JMHO of course

This is a great example of how not to enter into a communication. Pure laziness on his part.
I'd score his approach in box 2 obscure (red light) which is in the direction of communication failure.
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1305831102.jpg

I get these all the time. 3rd world-ish sales solicitations. After a year, I'd tell him to forget it.
I get calls from IBM and HP all the time, cold-calling. Umm... we have a national account team....

I had requested and received a download of a product demo.

Got one automated follow up email shortly there after.

No other communication for over a year.

He did respond again.

Pretty obvious from his response that his lead system spit my name out recently and that the email was auto generated. He was surprised that it did not insert a proper salutation and he seemed fairly irritated that it was feeding him year old leads and erroneously flagged it as an active quote when in fact there was never a quote requested.

I'd say all in all, you did the guy a favor.

He's a butthole. Give it the attention it deserves...and people wonder why I ignor life most of the time!

Your telling me you put your actual contact information when you downloaded a demo.


Who does that?