You don’t have to suck at follow ups.
It’s a generally known rule that to be a good salesperson, you need to prime yourself to follow up with a lead at least 5 times. #Ouch
After the first follow up email, it can feel a little awkward, right? That’s why I fell in love with a follow up method that my co-founder, Mike Kelly, came up with — and I have since made it my own. 😉
- It feels natural
- People love it
- It makes it easy to hit that 5x target
One of the best parts is it’s authentic, and HUMAN, which is something that can get lost when you’re trying to power through follow ups and you legit have nothing left to say.
You definitely don’t want to go with any of these:
“Hey, buy my thing. You’ll like it! I promise.”
“Remember me? You said you wanted to sign up, and then…you disappeared. What gives?”
“Hey heyyy stranger! Are you in a buying mood today?”
“seriously. I thought we had a connection…but I guess not.”
“FINE! I’m deleting your contact info.”
I mean, because while that would be 5 follow ups…it also would make you look a little REDRUM, right? And that’s not a good look for ANYONE.
Side note: sometimes searching for the perfect gif requires sacrificing future peaceful sleep…. 😳
OK, so you don’t want to come across as a stage 5 clinger, or a psychopath, but you still need those 5+ follow ups if you want to meet your revenue goals for the month.
This article is NOT for content creators that:
- focus on mainly passive products for revenue
- are booked solid with 1:1 work, and don’t want to scale
For the first, I’d argue you have some sort of funnel or FB ad strategy in place to generate lots of views. Perhaps a launch or two. For the second, I applaud you for being satisfied! That’s a great place to be.
I’d still recommend having a follow up system in place to nurture your past clients, and keep them in the loop but that’s a different article. THIS article is about not sucking at pure ‘n simple sales lead follow ups.
This article IS for people that:
- lead sales calls with prospects
- extend private invites for programs
- pre-validate programs before launching
- work 1:1 and want more clients
I’m sure I’m forgetting some examples of people this is for…but forgive me! Getting back to the not sucking. It’s simple. You trigger reciprocity by giving a follow up gift.
Let’s break this down with two different scenarios. Scenario 1 is you’ve had a sales call with said person, and now you’re starting your follow up process.
The first email: Recap your initial sales discussion and offer (if you made one on the call, otherwise present your offer), let them know they can touch base with questions
The second email: Reach out the next day, and present the follow up gift and why it’s going to be helpful for them (whether they convert or not…that’s the human-ness at play)
The third email: Either a “you’re welcome” if they wrote back to your gift email, or a “want to make sure you saw the follow up gift and reminder of why you think it’ll be really helpful for them”
The fourth email: Dig out a relevant element inside of the follow up gift, especially powerful if you have a testimonial or case study related to that element AND whatever you pitched, and send a shortie email showcasing that
The fifth email: Touch base about that initial offer one more time, and check in on their progress with whatever they were struggling with on that initial sales call (i.e. demonstrate that they haven’t achieved their goal by waiting).
Obviously you can keep going, but that’s a great EASY flow to follow for 5 authentic follow up emails that don’t feel gross for you or them.
Scenario 2 is exactly the same as above, but you now also have more information about what has been happening behind the scenes since they went radio silent on you, or replied…but haven’t purchased yet. You’ve got data on your side.
No need to get impatient, or frustrated when they don’t buy immediately. Ahem.
With data on your side, you know that after you sent them their follow up gift, they logged in and took a peek. They even went and looked at the paid offer you pitched them on the call.
That tells you they really ARE interested, so now it’s a matter of continuing to dig into their possible questions, provide peer evidence and making sure they understand the value of your offer. It might take a little time, and multiple follow ups, but that’s OK.
One of the worst parts of the 5 follow ups WITHOUT data is you can be left feeling like you’re being pushy. But WITH data?
It changes the follow up from a “Are they even interested???” experience to one that not only feels more empowered for YOU as the sales person, but for THEM as the buyer. Because you know what is happening behind the scenes.
And knowledge is power.
Imagine seeing this screenshot of a user activity, but sub in your own free content and teasers for your paid content. Even better, know that most of these activities are tagged for that specific content, and user, so that you can automatically send triggered emails based on their activities.
And triggered emails are awesome for sales. But that’s a topic for another day!
If you want to steal our follow up system, including more details on the follow up gift strategy that has gotten us a 60% super positive response rate on ultra cold leads (aka you can do better!) AND how we manage our follow ups so nobody falls through the cracks….grab it here.
Oh yeah, and that above sexy screenshot? That’s from our content platform, MemberVault, where you turn your subscribers into buyers and buyers into repeat buyers. 🔥
