Steve McKenna 

North Star Productions

Growing revenue can only be achieved by three different methods:

1. Sell more units

2. Increase prices

3. Add on complementary products or services.


As a fabricator, typically the first place to start is more units.  Most shops try to increase their SF output or increase the number of jobs they sell per week to increase ad spend. 

In this article, I will focus on how to grow sales without having to generating more leads by simply converting more of the quotes you’re already sending into more sales.

Clate Mask, author of my favorite book of 2024 called Conquer the Chaos says: “The fortune is in the follow-up.”

I have seen this first hand, with my own eyes, and in my own business.  Before having a defined sales process, we assumed our salespeople were following up — because they said they were.

When we implemented our CRM software and required our sales team to log activity (even send emails and text messages directly from the CRM), we suddenly realized how little follow-up was happening! 

Never assume follow-up is happening. Define your follow-up process. 


Did you know that: 

  • 80% of sales require an average of 5 follow ups. 

  • 48% of sales reps NEVER follow up.

  • 44% of sales reps only follow up ONCE.

  • And after 4 follow-ups, 94% of sales reps have given up.*


That is A LOT of potential sales that are not being closed AND just think of all the potential revenue being left on the table!

When you talk to your salespeople you might hear this:

  • “I don’t want to be too pushy.”

  • They said they would call me when they are ready.”

  • “I think I did a good job in the show- room and that speaks volumes, so I shouldn’t have to follow up.”

  • “I can’t follow-up with someone more than 6 times!  I’ll sound like a used car salesman!  My customers will never put up with that amount of harassment!”


If this sounds familiar, try this. In addition to your salesperson following up with the client, automate some touch points. Rather than relying all on human memory or manual tasks for each step, you can expect your close rates to improve and see benefits to your customer experience.

What happens when you automate some or all of the follow-up process:

1. You have the opportunity to provide additional value.

2. You’re able to give more information you may have forgotten to discuss in a single face-to-face meeting.

3. It shows you care.

4. It makes you stand out from your competition.

5. It reinforces your reputation as an expert by providing all this free information!

6. It improves the customer experience.

To be clear, when I use the term follow-up, I don’t mean every contact should be an email, phone call or text message asking if the customer is ready to buy yet!  

This is simply a touch-point and an opportunity to provide value to the customer.


Here’s some sample email subjects that you can easily automate to send to your customer:


1. Warranty information about a product that they’ve been quoted on.

2. Common FAQs.

3. What to expect in our process - from time of purchase to time of installation, here’s an overview of how we complete the work.

4. Design inspirations for 2024.

5. Product information about the material they are interested in.

6. Meet the team: take an opportunity to introduce your management team, your templater, your fabrication team, your installers, your shop dog, and anyone else who’s involved and around the process.

7. Care guides for granite, quartz, porcelain, and other items you sell.

8. Recent projects you’ve completed that you want to highlight.

9. Community engagement projects your company is involved in, such as sponsorships, events you’ve attended, or volunteer efforts your team has made.

… and so on.


As you can see, the opportunities to provide value are endless!  


Automating these messages can help nurture the relationship and keep the client engaged. You can send out emails daily, every other day, or 2-3 times a week, whatever you decide is the right frequency. Test and observe the results; there is no perfect answer to how you deliver them.

I suggest on every 2-3 emails, you can include a link to a calendar that says: If you’re ready to book your project, make an appointment here, and let’s get your kitchen transformation started!

Finally, I recommend taking the time to write these emails in your own voice, add your own quirks and include any local references that you can think might be relevant. The more that you can make the communication feel authentic (it should truly be authentic, not just templated) and personalized, the better the engagement will be. 


Steve McKenna is CEO of North Star Productions.

* Source: ircsalessolutions.com/insights/sales-follow-up-statistics/