Have you checked in with your past clients lately? Or how about all those leads that never went anywhere?
How’s your sales funnel looking these days?
If you don’t have a good answer for any of those questions, may I suggest you get to work on creating a follow up process to ensure you don’t lose track of any of those folks who may be interested in doing business with you.
Any sort of business relying on lead generation as a source of revenue should absolutely have some sort of sales funnel in place as part of a follow up plan.
Sales funnel? Lead generation? This sounds fancy and like a lot of work, but it doesn’t have to be.
Essentially, when I talk about a sales funnel, I mean coming up with a way to categorize your prospects. Those who approach you for information, but never get back with you. Those might be cold leads, those who approach you for information, and you have a back and forth conversation or two. They may also be warm leads. Then when you actually have one of those leads become a client? They become…well…clients.
No matter how many clients you have, you can’t forget about all those old leads. You have no idea what may have happened in their business, or in their lives that prevented them from contacting you again, so it’s up to you to follow up and see if you can help them several weeks, months, or perhaps years after you first heard from them.
There are dozens of CRMs (Contact Relationship Management) programs on the market that streamline this process for you. My goal here is simply to make sure follow-up is on your radar.
I challenge you today to go through your email from past and prospective clients to see if you’re leaving money on the table. Go ahead and take the time to make a list of those old leads and make a follow up plan!
Now whatever you do, don’t contact those people and just say, “Hey, want to work with me now?”
Just kidding, I know you wouldn’t do that.
You have to offer something of value if you want to grab them in that warm fuzzy center of their heart where they say, “Aww…so and so was thinking of me!”
For instance, do you have a new info product they might like? A spring promotion that might be of interest? An upcoming webinar or event they might enjoy? A special blog post full of value and benefit? Whatever it is, if you make the point of contact about them, you’ve already gotten a foot in the door.
We’re all used to companies selling us to death these days. How would you feel if a business owner contacted you out of the blue just to pass along a great piece of information, or a cool new resource…no strings attached?
I bet it would make you consider working with that person, wouldn’t it? I thought so!
Now all you have to do is figure out what it is you have that would be of value and benefit to those on your follow-up list.
