How to Write a Sales Follow-Up Email That Gets a Response

80% of sales require 5 or more follow-ups. 44% of salespeople stop after one. The follow-up is where most deals are won or lost - not because the buyer wasn't interested, but because the timing wasn't right the first time and the follow-up didn't give them a reason to re-engage.

Why this happens

Follow-ups that add new value get 3x the reply rate of follow-ups that just re-ask. The failure mode is treating the follow-up as a nudge rather than a new touch. "Just following up" tells the prospect nothing they didn't already know - you sent an email, they saw it, they didn't respond. The follow-up needs to give them a reason to change that decision.

The root cause is usually a process problem, not a skills problem. Most salespeople don't have a framework for what goes in each follow-up, so they default to "checking in" - which is the lowest-value thing they could send. A sequence built around adding something new each time removes the guesswork and the discomfort of following up.

What to check first

Before you rewrite your follow-up sequence, answer these four questions:

Does each follow-up add something the previous one didn't? Read your last 5 follow-ups to a single prospect. If they all say roughly the same thing in slightly different words, you've been re-asking, not re-engaging.
Is the value in the first sentence? A follow-up that buries the new information in paragraph two won't get read. Your reader decides in the first line whether opening the email was worth their time.
Are you asking for the same thing every time? Prospects who didn't respond to "book a 30-minute call" the first time won't respond to it on the third ask. Ladder your ask down - start big, get smaller.
Does your fifth email exist? Most salespeople's sequences end at two or three. The fifth email - the explicit breakup - often generates more responses than emails two, three, and four combined.

How to fix it

Build a 5-email sequence where each follow-up adds a specific type of value:

Follow-up 1 - Add context: Why is right now the right moment for this conversation? An industry report, a competitor's move, a regulatory change, or a data point that makes your product more relevant today than it was when you first reached out. Keep it to 3-4 sentences.

Follow-up 2 - Add social proof: Find the customer most similar to your prospect and share one specific result - not a vague testimonial, but a number. "A team like yours reduced their onboarding time from 14 days to 3 using [product]" is more persuasive than "our customers love us."

Follow-up 3 - Reframe the problem: Come at the pain from a different angle. If your first email named the operational problem, follow-up 3 names the financial consequence. If you led with efficiency, reframe around risk. A different angle on the same problem surfaces with a different buyer on a different day.

Follow-up 4 - Lower the ask: Replace "book a 30-minute call" with something smaller - a yes/no question, a 10-minute conversation, a single piece of feedback. Removing friction from the next step is often enough to restart the conversation.

Follow-up 5 - The breakup: Tell them explicitly that you won't follow up again after this email, and why you thought the conversation was worth having. Leave the door open without pressure. "If the timing changes, here's how to reach me." This removes the open loop for both of you - and it often generates a response from buyers who weren't ready yet but didn't know how to say so.

Remove the guesswork

The difference between a follow-up sequence that converts and one that gets ignored is usually messaging - whether each touch gives the prospect a genuine new reason to respond. RightEngagement validates your outbound sequence against your ICP so you know which messages land and which are burning send credits without moving the deal forward.

Validate your follow-up sequence