- Do you want to learn how to follow up with clients?
Well we have eight tips for you today on The Journey.
All right, Sam, so you just
had this amazing meeting with a potential client,
everything went really well, you talked about budget,
you sent them a follow up email with some questions,
things are going well,
and then you never hear from them.
There are several different situations where it can seem
like a client is pretty much ghosting you,
starting with, maybe you submitted a proposal
and you haven't received a response back yet,
or maybe you're waiting for that client
to send you certain materials
and you just haven't heard from them?
- Or it could have been overdue invoice that you were
expecting to get paid at a certain time,
that does happen.
Or it could be the holiday season.
Many people are traveling for the holiday
and they're just maybe in vacation mode.
These could be some things that you could look at
to think about if that person
is actually ghosting you
or it's these other situations that are really happening.
- Yeah. And Sam that's a good reminder
that maybe you shouldn't just
automatically take it personally.
Take a step back, think about why this person
actually might not have responded yet.
- Alright. So how long do you wait before following up?
I'm assuming it's going to be different
for each situation, right Alex?
- Yeah. So at my role in GoDaddy,
I actually work with a lot of clients on a one on one basis,
and that means there's a lot of follow-up
that goes into that.
So, typically, if it's waiting for a call
or meeting to set up,
I would give it about two or three days.
There's a lot of times where clients say,
"Oh, don't call me. I'll give you a call."
I give that about a couple of days,
because then there's a little wiggle room.
- Right
- But, if you're waiting for an actual proposal
and you've submitted that proposal,
I would say at least wait a week,
because they may have to be getting
responses or input from other people as well.
- And a good note to keep in mind is
the longer we wait to make a decision on something,
the easier it is to just forget about it.
So, our suggestion is,
when you're interacting with your clients,
set the proper expectations.
If you're going to follow up,
let them know when you will and set yourself a reminder
so you don't forget.
- Absolutely. The more time that passes,
the more we convince ourselves against something.
So you want to stay fresh in their mind.
- Right.
- But, by setting that specific appointment time,
or whenever you're going to call them, say,
"Hey, I'm going to follow up in one week
on Thursday at 12 o'clock."
Then you know it's a good time for them,
you're not calling at a bad time,
you've set that expectation,
and then you're not bugging them.
- Oh, and I know in my role,
we actually use some tools like Calendly
where you can actually pop their email
into that and it will send them automatically
a reminder when that specific appointment is coming up.
- That thing is a life saver.
- Technology is great.
All right now. So you've made the appointment
and you don't really know how to follow up.
We're now going to go into the tips
on what you can actually do.
- First and foremost, be pragmatic.
So, is it really too soon for you to be following up?
And we know you're excited
to get things rolling and moving along,
but has it been a reasonable amount of time
for them to actually respond?
And also keep in mind their industry.
So, let's say that they work in the restaurant industry,
calling at Friday at 5:00 PM,
of course, they're not going to answer.
That makes sense.
- Or at lunch time
- Exactly.
- So for the second tip, emphasize your needs.
It's very important to let people know
upfront what you actually need.
So say for instance, in your follow up email,
"Hey, I'm following up on that overdue invoice,"
or "following up on that proposal we just spoke about."
You want to make sure that they know
the necessity of them opening that up
and getting back to you.
- Yeah.
And that starts with even
a very clear and direct subject line for your email.
I know I get hundreds of emails a day.
Sometimes you just need that really clear direction listed
there on the forefront so that people know
exactly what action they need to take.
And that brings us to our next tip,
give a specific call to action.
Be very direct in your message of exactly what steps
they need to take, and what that timeline looks like.
- And it's important to have that
call to action clearly laid out in the body of your email.
You've already put it in your subject line.
It's good to follow that up with that call to action
in the body as well.
So continuing on with,
be specific, be, be specific.
(laughing)
You want to make sure in your email that you're definitely
telling them what you want to do.
So when I'm following up with my clients,
say I give them a document of their metrics,
the performance that they've had to this point
in our relationship.
In that email, I'm going to actually include
a link to my calendar and ask them
to click on that and see what time works best
for us both, and put some time
on my calendar because I like to tell my clients,
"Hey, I value your time,
so don't just waste it and try to call
and I'm on the other line."
This way we know at a certain day,
certain time we're going to talk about
this specific information that's in that email.
- So basically make it as easy as possible.
- Yes. All right.
So for our fourth tip, keep it short and to the point.
(laughing)
So Alex, I know you have some experience with this.
- With being short? Yeah.
- Of course.
(laughing)
- No seriously though, with emails,
I'm so tempted all the time to include so much information
and to go on and on and on.
But honestly, people don't have time in their day.
If you include way too long of an email,
they're just going to skim through it.
They might've missed out on some important information
that you were trying to include.
Keep it short and simple.
Be very direct, as we were saying.
- So for our fifth tip, have a neutral tone.
You don't want to go in it with assumptions like,
"Oh, they've been ignoring me,"
You want to make sure that your tone
is just even, and it's not presumptuous.
No all caps in your email.
- Please. No.
- No.
- Absolutely.
I mean, it's very important
to make sure that you're staying calm and collected,
and don't just assume the worst, right?
- Right.
- Give them the benefit of the doubt.
Stay calm and collected.
Because if not, then you might come off
as super pushy or arrogant.
And that could absolutely turn them the opposite direction.
- So for our sixth tip, make it about their best interest.
What's in it for the client?
- Yeah, exactly.
I know I've had clients talk to me
about how important it is for them to
get things taken care of as soon as possible,
and then all of a sudden you don't hear from them.
So making them kind of aware that this
is really holding up their best interests,
and for us to be able to accomplish their goals,
things have got to start moving.
- Right. And in my role,
typically after they come from your department,
they come to me and it's a certain pain point that they had.
Maybe they didn't have a consistent presence online,
so they wanted to have brand consistency
and they want to make sure that this is all working.
So, okay. In my email, it's like,
"Hey, remember you wanted to make sure
that you can evaluate your investment
and make sure that is bringing you a return.
So you want to make sure we get this call done."
- Our next tip is be persistent, but not annoying.
So of course, if you're feeling super frustrated,
take a step back, take a breather before you revisit this.
But at the same time,
you do still want to make sure you're being persistent
because sometimes it's just not a good time for people.
So having that consistent reminder can be good
and can end up paying off
by them finally getting back to you.
- For our last tip, remember,
it's okay to follow up for other reasons.
In my role, sometimes it's not even
something that is set on the calendar,
say they just had a great sale in their store,
I may just want to follow up and say,
"Hey, by the way, how did everything go?
Is there anything that we can talk about, post for you?"
So these things are okay to follow up on.
- Yeah, it's important to be proactive.
So you don't have to only follow up when you need something,
You can just follow up to establish that really great
customer service with them.
So, if it's after the holidays,
you can send them an email and say,
"Hey, hope the holidays were really great for you."
Or let's say it's a special anniversary, so,
"Hey, you've been with us for a year.
Just wanted to say thank you for your business,"
anything along those lines to make them feel special.
- So, no matter what the situation is,
just make sure you have a plan in place
that you can follow with your clients
and make it as smooth as possible.
- Silky smooth.
So now you know how to follow up with clients.
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