My Kind of Follow-Up

We’ve all heard that, “the fortune is in the follow-up…” right?

What we hear much less about is exactly what that “follow-up” looks like.

I think back to my brief but educational career as a car salesman in Scottsdale Arizona (Holy Heat Batman!). Back then, when you weren’t able to sell the victim customer, you got their phone number and left an endless stream of messages all basically saying the same thing:

You’ll have to forgive me because I really had no idea what I was doing at the time. I was surrounded by a new breed of folks who would stagger into work barely alive after their night of partying.

Now not all of them were that way, of course, but car salesmen do have a reputation for a reason.

Anywho… as I’ve matured a bit and developed my marketing skills, I’ve realized that following-up does not mean chasing.

For me, following-up means this:

This, I think is a much better way to view “follow-up.”

I do this because I feel it’s more effective. Not necessarily in the short term, but in the long term.

If you follow-up to the point of beating your prospect into submission, you might get the client, but you’ll probably ruin your positioning and drastically cut your potential income.

How would behavior like this ruin your positioning?

Think about it this way:

Your new client has just endured your follow-up machine. The client finally says “Yes, I’ll hire you.” and the project begins.

No one has said it out loud, but you’ve basically barged your way into the client’s business and refused to leave until you were hired.

In not so nice words, you begged to be there 🙂

So now that you’re there, the pressure is on YOU to produce. In fact, I would imagine that the client is 100% focused on answering the question, “Was this the right decision for me to make?”

She looks for clues to find her answer.

This is not a good position to be in.

What you’ve basically done here is rushed things too much. You got the business but you sacrificed the relationship. More specifically, you’ve sacrificed how your client perceives you.

This is a very expensive mistake.

So if you’re with me so far, the next logical question is, “What is the smart way to follow-up so you preserve your positioning as the expert?”

Two answers.

One, you want to make your follow-up consistent. Not just when you need business.

Two, the point of following-up, in my opinion, is not to “get the business.” The point is to add value. At some point, you tip the scale and that turns into business.

If all of this doesn’t seem calculated and results driven enough for you, well, welcome to business.

I haven’t met a person yet who knows how to get things to work exactly like they want them to… the first time around.

If you want to keep searching for a silver bullet system that makes big promises, that’s your choice.

In the long run though, I think it’s just easier to do the real work. And the real work is simply adding more value to the lives of your prospects than anyone else.

So much of the success you see out there is created by people who simply didn’t quit. It’s not that they’re the best in the world at anything… well, except maybe not quitting. I’m not saying that to discount their success, I’m saying that to highlight how important “not quitting” really is.

One of the most valuable assets in the client business is patience.

The more you have, the better things are.

The bottom line is this: the more your client WANTS to work with you, the better off your relationship will be.

Your follow-up should be about fostering that feeling in the heart and mind of your prospect.

It shouldn’t be about bugging them to death until they say, “Yes.”

Because that kind of a “Yes” is not what you want.

See you tomorrow,

Jason Leister
Editor, The Client Letter
Creating Success for Independent Professionals
ClientsSuck.net