Struggling to get hold of clients and prospects?

Getting hold of clients and prospects can be a challenge at times, I’ve had a number of my clients get in touch with me over the past week so I thought it would be useful to put something together to cover this topic.

From the client's perspective there could be a million and one reasons why they stop engaging with us, they are busy doing their day to day jobs and sometimes we fall down their priorities, so we have to be a little different in how we approach things, if our clients are receiving lots of the same type of reach out messages our own message is going to get lost in the noise and just doing what we have always done is no longer an effective approach.

So here are a few ideas to help you to create a follow up system that will generate more responses

Create a follow up system that will generate more responses

Telephone - The telephone is still the most effective tool to get hold of people bar none but sometimes we need to be a bit more creative around how we call people and try other ways of reaching our clients and prospects

1)??????Think about and review the times you are calling your clients and prospects, it sounds obvious but a very basic change could be if you always call a prospect in the morning try an afternoon?

2)?????Many of the people we are trying to reach could be busy senior people and 9 – 5 isn’t always the best time to reach them, I’ve found that when I’m struggling to get hold of a senior person calling before 8.30am or after 6pm can be a great time to get hold of them.

The effort you put into sales directly reflects the outcomes you achieve and those extra elements of effort make a massive difference.

3)?????Voicemail – the voicemail we leave can make a big difference to whether we do or do not get a response, sometimes by leaving too much information or too long a message we won’t get a response, but if we leave a short non detailed voicemail it can make a massive difference.

Mix up your follow up tools

Although the telephone is still our go to tool for following up, there are times when we need to try other ways of getting hold of people

Text Message / WhatsApp message – People respond to different ways of communicating and as most people’s mobile phones are usually surgically attached to their bodies text messages and WhatsApp messages can get an instant response from people who won’t take our calls.

WhatsApp can also be a bit more interactive and just like text messages, these can generate an instant response from clients and prospects.

LinkedIn messages – If you aren’t already doing this, firstly you should always connect with a lead or a prospect, or a client on LinkedIn, this not only helps to create rapport and build a relationship but also provides another direct way of communicating and again if people won’t take a call but they may well respond to a LinkedIn message.

Video messaging (WhatsApp /LinkedIn) – I’m going to address the elephant in the room, if you are reading this and the thought of sending a video message to your client immediately makes you think “oh no I can’t do that” let me say three things to you

1)??????Oh yes you can! it doesn’t have to be perfect, in fact, the more you come across as a normal person the better, video messages are massive, they are interactive and they work!

2)?????People are 73% more likely to open a video message than listen to a voicemail or open an email.

3)?????If you are not using video you could be missing out on a huge amount of business.

Both LinkedIn and WhatsApp users respond really well to video and this again makes the process more interactive rather than just another call or email.

The One line email follow up – Email is still a powerful tool but our clients and prospects get a lot of emails so we have got to grab their attention so the rule here is short and sweet and less is more, I use the example below to get a response from more of my clients and prospects.

The header

The header can be really important in getting attention, so be creative with your headers, make them short and attention grabbing.

Direct Mail (That’s a physical paper letter) – Yes I’m serious, for the right client this can be a great way of getting hold of people, but as there is an additional cost, it’s not something you would send on mass but to the bigger clients and bigger deals that warrant the extra little effort to get a bigger deal across the line.?

Hopefully, this gives you a few new ideas to think about to re engage your prospects and get some deals over the line, until next time happy selling!

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