After you’ve made your first contact with a prospect how do you follow up?
First, understand that following up with good prospects and clients is crucial if you want to have a business with a steady income.
You might think that your brilliantly designed direct mail piece should convert every prospect into a paying client.
Or you might think that the business owner you met at a business networking event will be calling you some time soon…after all he obviously liked you and he has your business card.
Or that well crafted, personalized email you sent…he couldn’t possibly ignore that.
Let Me Introduce You To The World
Your Prospect Lives In…
He has dozens of different things going on at once. He is, after all running a business.
He’s dealing with customers and employees. He has deliveries, bills, sales people, vendors and delivery drivers calling on him.
At the end of each week he has to pay out salaries…at the end of each month rent and a whole pile of other expenses.
Sure he might have met you or read your email or your letter. He might even be really interested in what you have to say.
But in most cases he’s so busy you’re
not even on his radar yet!
He’s moved on and even if he was interested in what you might be able to do for him he’s expecting that you’ll follow up with him (every other sales person and supplier he’s bought from followed up so why should you be any different?)
That’s why it’s absolutely critical that you think through your follow up process.
If you have an email address that you know is good you can follow up by email and you can do it very effectively.
The real secret is heavy personalization, appealing to your prospects wants and needs and positioning yourself as an expert (or as the connection to an expert).
I cover the kinds of follow ups you can do in detail in the report 25 Different Ways To Get Paying Clients with quite a few examples.
You can use online video, you can use an email, you can use screen shots of your prospect’s website or copies of his advertising or almost anything else that will get his attention.
See page 70 of the report 25 Different Ways to Get Paying Clients for ideas. Also some clever marketers have worked out you can adapt the series outlined in pages 50 to 55 very easily to email and that sequence can be VERY effective.
If you’re going out of your way to offer really useful information that’s customized to your prospect and his business and you make multiple contacts that way you’re going to dramatically increase the number of prospects who contact you.
You’ll also massively increase their perception of you as an expert
and potentially increase the fees you can charge…
Also think of using other media as well as email. Snail mail, phone calls, and in person calls are all amazingly powerful…especially if your plan is to share valuable information with those contacts.
If the first words out of your mouth are something like: “I was thinking about you and your business and I had an idea that might be valuable to you…” or “I read this article today on [topic] and I had to share it with you” or “I just finished a new report on [topic] and my first thought was ‘this would be great for [prospect’s name] and his business.'”
If you’re targeting a particular niche with your services then having an effective follow up system is crucially important because it’s a large part of positioning yourself as the go to marketing expert in that niche.
Effective follow up tools like lead generating reports and direct mail pieces is something we do when I work with you in the exclusive, customized niche yourself service I offer.
Take the time to think through who your prospects are, what’s important to them and what information you can share with them that is truly useful to them and you can design your own follow up system.
Then you just have to use it consistently.