Follow up check!
I’m a firm believer that simply following up with your leads can lead to paying clients. It really has worked for me. You can’t just send out a sales letter or email to a prospective client and leave it up to them to get in touch with you.
I’ve written an ebook on the subject of follow up for virtual assistants, and I’m working on a second edition, to cover even more scenarios.
One thing I’ve been faced with since I wrote that book was simply being too busy to keep on top of my follow up. Bad, bad, bad. When I do take the time to follow up on quickly cooling off leads, I do notice a difference.
Let’s look at a scenario.
You sign on a new retainer client and everything is going great. Full steam ahead. After a couple of months, something comes up in the clients’ life that causes them to either dramatically reduce their hours, or cut off the retainer all together. Total bummer.
It’s easy to forget about these people when you’ve moved on and taken on another client in their place.
But what happens if you take a couple of minutes to follow up with that person?
Just write a brief email:
Dear Old Client,
I hope everything is going well with you. I have some hours available next week, and thought I would offer them to you, if there’s something I could be helping you with.
I sincerely enjoyed working on your projects, and I’d like to let you know I’m here if there’s ever anything I could help with, even on an hourly basis.
Regards,
Your name.
It’s not hard. And it’s effective. Sometimes people are constantly putting something off, and all it takes is a simple prompt to put them into outsource mode.
Try it!
The important role of follow up
For my contribution for the Revolutionary blog, I would like to include an excerpt from my book, The Art of Follow Up.
I honestly don’t believe I would have a full roster of clients if it weren’t for diligent follow up with all of my leads.
It’s not as intimidating as it may seem, trust me. If I can do it, you can do it.
You own a Virtual Assistant business. You are the Commander in Chief, CEO, Director of Sales and Marketing, Receptionist and most likely Maintenance crew, among other things. If you don’t follow up with your potential clients, who will? Your competitors will!
After you’ve sent a targeted mailing, do you sit back and wait for the phone to ring? I sincerely hope not. You must be proactive. You might be lucky and receive a couple of phone calls, but don’t hold your breath. Whether you are targeting successful coaches or top producing real estate agents, chances are you selected your target market because they are busy people. Busy people tend to let their mail sit for a long time, especially if they don’t know who it came from. Perhaps your letter was opened and well received by the reader, but then got stuck in the glove box or tossed into the recycling bin.
You must make another contact with each and every recipient of that letter. A dozen of those letters could be sitting on desks or thumb tacked on bulletin boards while their readers wait for a free moment to contact you. What if that moment never comes and your potential client keeps getting busier and busier? They could really use your services and are likely to hire you, if you follow up with them.
You have probably found yourself in a similar situation. Think about it. The most recent example in my own life was a couple of months ago. I received a letter in the mail from a company offering credit card merchant accounts to new businesses. I thought it was interesting and set it aside. I had been too busy to call him. If he had called me back or sent me more information, I might have obtained his services or at the very least spread the word to my business contacts.
Rule # 1:
Never leave it up to your potential client to contact you.
Say it aloud, memorize it and repeat it. If you leave it up to a potential client to call you, you are taking quite a risk. All it takes is another letter, a postcard or a simple phone call. You must understand how important it is to stay in touch with potential clients.
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