My Follow-Up Formula: Stop Chasing Dead Leads

Most people follow up until they're desperate, and desperation costs you money. In this episode, I'm breaking down the two-part follow-up method I swear by: setting a defined sequence so you always know when a lead is dead, and why chasing new leads is almost always a better use of your time than begging old ones. I'll walk you through the exact timeline I use, and what to do with leads that just aren't ready yet.

Transcript

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I asked a few of my coaching clients what I should talk about on the podcast next. And almost everybody wrote back and said, please talk about follow-up. Do I have to follow up forever? Do I just have to keep sending messages until I finally get a notice that this person doesn't want to work with me or has died? Like, how long do I actually have to keep emailing this person and saying, just touching base? Is there ever an endpoint? When can I finally mark them as a dead lead? Today I want to talk about follow-up and specifically the follow-up method that I actually use and why I think most people are doing it completely wrong. The problem with how most service business owners follow up is that they have no endpoint. They just keep going and going. They're on this hamster wheel, another email, another check-in. I just wanted to circle back. When you don't have a defined sequence, a couple of things start to happen. You start to feel desperate, even if you're not. You start to offer bonuses, you start to say, hey, let's just jump on another call. And that's probably the worst one because that is going to take up the majority of your time. And before you know it, this lead is really, really expensive because you have so much time sunk into them. A mistake I used to make all the time. I felt weird just emailing people and saying or texting them and saying, hey, I just wanted to touch base. Hope your daughter's sixth birthday party was fun. Do you want to do that website? And so I would start to say things like, hey, um, I'll give you 10% off, or I'll give you an extra strategy session, or I'll uh, you know, discount it even further. And this is a really good way to kill your margins and get a yes from somebody who wasn't an ideal client to begin with. So that leaves us with the question then, how many times do you follow up? How many chances do you give them? Because we all have heard the story of I wrote them that 12th email and they finally said yes. So if we don't all want to lay awake at night wondering what could have been, what do we do and how do we put it into practice? There are two principles that I want to call out today. And then at the end of this episode, I'm going to give you my follow-up sequence that I use and give you the pattern that you can rinse and repeat in your business and finally mark a lead as dead if you have followed this. Principle number one is to commit to the system. You have to decide this is what we're going to do and we're going to follow it through. We're not going to compromise, we're not going to keep following up with them, we're not going to show up at their door or send them presents. We're going to follow this system because it's going to give us peace of mind and it's going to give us really good data. So when you treat all leads the same, you're finally able to see, oh, wow. If we follow up with people three times, that's typically when they convert. Or when we space this out a little bit more, or when we text them on the second follow-up and instead of emailing them, we're seeing a higher conversion rate. You are not looking for one-off anecdotal stories anymore. You are a business owner, not a freelancer. So I want you to operate as such. You're looking for data to say this is how leads convert, which is why sticking to the system and committing to it is so important. The second principle is that new is always better. If you watch How I Met Your Mother, you'll remember the episode where Barney tells Ted when it comes to dating, new is always better. The new girl that you meet is always more exciting and more entertaining than the girl you were previously dating. And while I think Barney is a scumbag and this doesn't apply to personal relationships, I do think that this is a great philosophy to live by when it comes to your leads. You are always more interested in the person who's coming in the door, ready to spend money with you, than you are the person that you're having to chase down and beg to work with you. It's exhausting and it's way better to find people who are excited to work with you, who are ready to hear your pitch, who haven't heard this a million times, who you're not begging and saying, hey, please, please, please, let's jump on another call. Let me sink more time into this so that you can still think about it some more. We want to make sure that the people we're talking to are interested and that they have an immediate need. And that's the principle behind new is always better. The people that you're talking to may have a more urgent need than the people that you've been talking to for six months. They are ready to pull the trigger. They might be more willing to sign the contract. And if that's the case, rather than continuing to follow up with the person who's on the fence, your hourly rate actually goes way up if you can close the person who's a lot more eager and ready to sign with you. You might be sitting there saying, sure, Susie, that sounds awesome. If I had tons of leads coming in, I wouldn't have to follow up with everybody so much. Well, that comes back to an earlier episode that we did. You have to set up some kind of lead flow where leads are consistently coming in through outbound channels. This gives you the confidence to follow these two principles and put a follow-up plan in place. Speaking of your follow-up plan, here is my follow-up sequence that I used with all of my clients and I have implemented in different businesses and seen huge success rates from. I want you to start by getting them their proposal or initial offer, strategy session, whatever you're going to implement as that first step, I want you to get that to them within 24 hours. I want you to just say, as soon as I have this call with them, within 24 hours, I'm getting them the proposal or I'm getting them that initial step, I am getting them pricing, whatever that might be, I am emailing them. If it takes you a little bit longer, you need to email them something, some kind of next step. I'll have the audit to you in XYZ, whatever you're going to do, contact them 24 hours after you have that initial call within 24 hours. Ideally right after you have it. 48 hours later, I want you to follow up with the information that you have and just say, hey, I just wanted to see if you had any questions about this. And, you know, first looking through it and make sure that I'm available to you and that I can answer any of those questions. Why am I following up so quickly in those first two days? They are most excited about working with you. They are most willing to give you their credit card number if you get them in that first 48 hours. They'll never be more excited than in those first 48 hours. So it's really important to capture that. And I know this is an unpopular opinion in the age of work-life balance and all these different things, but if it's on the weekend, I would still schedule the email to go out Saturday morning, wrap up your calls. If it's the end of the day, Friday, be like, hey, I'm gonna be in touch with you on Monday, but I just wanted to send you a quick message and say, you've been on my mind and I really enjoyed your call. I just think things like that go a really long way. Okay, so you followed up with them immediately after. Hopefully, you have already scheduled a follow-up call on that initial call. We talked about that in a previous episode. One thing I like to point out here is anytime you are actually able to speak with them, so you get them on another call, they say, Yes, I have some questions, the follow-up sequence resets. So you're gonna follow the same process if you start talking to them. Okay, 24 hours, 48 hours, and then it's really simple. Every week for three weeks, just set it on your calendar. I'm gonna touch base with sales leads on Tuesdays. I'm just gonna write them and say, hey, I just wanted to check in, see if anything changed. I know that our bonus offer expired, or I know that our deadline to get things moving passed, but I would love to see what we can work out for you. Let me know if you'd like to jump on another call. After those three weeks, after you even heard from them, I want you to just wait. You don't need to give them any more of your attention until they come back to you and kind of give you some proof of life and that they are ready to move forward. They know you're there, they saw it, they interacted with it, they're not interested right now. So just let them go and come back later. You're gonna put them on another list. You are going to put them on your nurture list. This is a list of people that you're going to pull from when you have a new offer, when you're ready to launch something, when you're ready to announce something, and you're going to say, um, hey, I know that you had reached out about that website. I know that you had reached out about XYZ, whatever your offer is. I would love to tell you about this new thing that we're doing, and I think it could be great for you. You can reach out to them one-on-one and pitch them on your seasonal offerings, your bonuses that you're doing, your discounts. You can go back to these people and pull them in at the right moment. And that is how I've gone back and won some of these deals without sacrificing my hourly rate and following up with them nonstop because it's so easy to say, well, I'm just firing off a quick email. But when you think about the mental energy it takes to keep track of them and keep them on a list and follow up with them all the time and see who closed and see who didn't and how long has it been, all of that adds up and it really takes up a lot of mental space for you. So I want you to follow this plan. I want you to allow leads to be dead if they are and go find new ones. New is always better. That is our new rule with sales calls. Get more excited about the people who are ready to work with you and ready to work with you quickly, and let the other people die out if they're going to. Don't beg them to work with you. Follow up well. Feel really confident that this is still a really aggressive follow up plan. It just isn't desperate. If you have questions or you disagree with me, I'd love to hear from you. I'd love to chat with you. You can check out my website, susiecoli.com. Until next time, sell well.