#6: Prospect Engagement – Do This Instead of “Following Up”

Office Operations | 2 comments

February’s theme is “Follow Up and Follow Through” and we are kicking it off with Prospect Engagement – Do This Instead of Following Up.

I know you’ve heard this a million times – the magic is in the follow-up. Yet less than half of business owners follow up with prospects. LESS THAN HALF!

Marketing, networking, creating your ideal client profile, all of that is great, but it only goes so far and not worth a whole lot if you don’t have that sales conversation.

The reasons why people don’t follow up are many: don’t want to seem pushy, don’t feel like they are wired to follow up as though it’s not a natural thing, hate selling, afraid of being turned down or rejected, afraid to talk about money, or they simply forget. Why do they forget? Because they don’t have a system!

In this video, I talk about this and give you a simple, comfortable way to follow up without “following up.”

We are starting off February and the theme this month is following up. Because this is one thing that a lot of people aren’t doing – following up with their prospects.

Before we get into the really quick system for today. I want to go over why do you think people don’t follow up. Wha tI’ve come up with is that:

  • they don’t want to seem pushy
  • don’t feel like they are wired to follow up as though it’s not a natural thing
  • afraid of being turned down or rejected
  • afraid to talk about money
  • they forgot

Do you know why? because they don’t have a system. If you have a system things ar so much easier, automated, and smoother. 

I’m going to share my process:

Focus on low-hanging fruit. The reason I use this analogy is because if you think about the fruit on a tree it’s the one closest to the ground I guess. But when you walk up they are usually the heaviest because they’re the ripest and they don’t require a lot of effort to take off the tree. 

These are the people who are interested. When I think about the categories I use: cold, warm,  and VIPs and we’ll go over that later on this month.  The cold prospects are those who don’t know you exist yet. Warm are people who know you and are liking what you have to offer but you haven’t worked with them yet. And the VIPs are the ones calling you up saying sign me up yesterday. So in this analogy, think of the low-hanging fruit as your warm prospects. They are ready to go, you just haven’t closed the deal with them yet so you need to follow up.

What I want you to do is first, go through your mental Rolodex, get a piece of paper and write them down.  You might find yourself getting more confident every time you write a new name down. You’re thinking, I used to work with this person at my old and I think they could use someone like me, or I did a project with this person a few years ago, I wonder if they need me again, or I met this person at an event last week and they said they were ready to work with me.

You’re wanting to hear those phrases “I want to work with you” or “I want to follow up but haven’t heard back, I’m kind of ready to go what do you think?” Even, “I wonder what it’s like to work with you? What do you say we get on the phone and talk about it?”

Write these names down on a list. That is going to be your – and I’m not going to say follow-up. Because what I want you to do instead of sending them an email or calling them on the phone and say, “Hey, I’m following up with you.” Instead, I want you to say “I’m checking in.” It seems more casual, comfortable, friendly…

I have a real estate agent, we bought our house from her about 8-9 years ago, she shows up to the house with a poinsettia and asks about the family and pets and how things are going if we have any friends who are moving to the area. Just checking in.

So much better than calling me and having to call her back and her saying “I’m just following up with you again this year.”

You could call or email and say, “This is Lisa Wells, I’m just checking in to see how you are, see where you are with your process of switching over to Infusionsoft, where are you with that? Do you want to get on the phone and we can talk about it? Ok not ready yet, no problem, let me know when you’re ready.”

It’s so casual and so much more comfortable than a formal follow-up phone call. 

Obviously, you can tweak this to your target audience and use the words that they would use. How in-depth you want to get “how’s the family?” Or “How’s business going? I wanted to see if there’s anything I can help you with because I’m offering A and B.”

This is just the first step in the process. This is your homework for today because we’ll be adding to this process throughout the month.

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2 Comments

  1. Jamie Caroland

    Good one!

    • Lisa Wells

      Thanks Jamie 🙂

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