 Do you want to learn how to follow up with clients? Well, we have eight tips for you today on the journey. All right, Sam, so you just had this amazing meeting with a potential client. Everything went really well. You talked about budget. You send them a follow-up email with some questions. Things are going well. And then you never hear from them. There are several different situations where it can seem like a client is pretty much ghosting you. Starting with, you know, maybe you submitted a proposal and you haven't received a response back yet or maybe you're waiting for that client to send you certain materials and you just haven't heard from them. Or it could have been overdue invoice that you were expecting to get paid at a certain time. That does happen. Or it could be the holiday season. You know, many people are traveling for the holiday and they're just maybe in vacation mode. These could be some things that you could look at to, you know, think about if that person is actually ghosting you or is these other situations that are really happening. Yeah, and Sam, that's a good reminder that maybe you shouldn't just automatically take it personally. Take a step back. Think about why this person actually might not have responded yet. All right, so how long do you wait before following up? I'm assuming it's going to be different for each situation right now. Yeah, so at my role in GoDaddy, I actually work with a lot of clients on a one-on-one basis. And that means there's a lot of follow-up that goes into that. So typically if it's, you know, waiting for a call or a meeting to set up, I would give it about two or three days. There's a lot of times where clients say, oh, don't call me. I'll give you a call. I give that about a couple days, you know, because then there's a little wiggle room. But if you're waiting for an actual proposal and you've submitted that proposal, I would say at least wait a week because they may have to be getting, you know, responses or input from other people as well. And a good note to keep in mind is the longer we wait to make a decision on something, the easier it is to just forget about it. So our suggestion is when you're interacting with your clients, set the proper expectations. If you're going to follow up, let them know when you will and set yourself a reminder so you don't forget. Absolutely. The more time that passes, the more we convince ourselves against something. So you want to stay fresh in their mind, but by setting that specific appointment time or whenever you're going to call them, say, hey, I'm going to follow up in one week on Thursday at 12 o'clock, then you know it's a good time for them. You're not calling at a bad time. You've set that expectation and then you're not bugging them. Oh, and I know in my role, we actually use some tools like Calendly where you can actually pop their email into that and it will send them automatically a reminder when that specific appointment is coming up. That thing is a life. Technology is great. All right now. So you've made the appointment and you don't really know how to follow up. We're now going to go on to the tips on what you can actually do. First and foremost, be pragmatic. So is it really too soon for you to be following up? And, you know, we know you're excited to get things rolling and moving along, but has it been a reasonable amount of time for them to actually respond and also keep in mind their industry? So let's say that they work in the restaurant industry calling at Friday at 5 p.m. Of course they're not going to answer. That makes sense. Exactly. So for the second tip, emphasize your needs. It's very important to let people know upfront what you actually need. So say for instance in your follow email, hey, I'm following up on that overdue invoice or following up on that proposal we just spoke about. You want to make sure that they know the necessity of them opening that up and getting back to you. Yeah, and that starts with even a very clear and direct subject line for your email. I know I get hundreds of emails a day. Sometimes you just need that really clear direction listed there on the forefront so that people know exactly what action they need to take. And that brings us to our next tip. Give a specific call to action. Be very direct in your message of exactly what steps they need to take and what that timeline looks like. And it's important to have that call to action clearly laid out in the body of your email. You've already put it in your subject line. It's good to follow that up with that call to action in the body as well. So continuing on with be specific, be specific. You want to make sure in your email that you're definitely telling them what you want to do. So when I'm following up with my clients, say I give them a document of their metrics, the performance that they've had to this point in our relationship. In that email, I'm going to actually include a link to my calendar and ask them to click on that and see what time works best for us both and put some time on my calendar. Because I like to tell my clients, hey, I value your time. So don't just waste it and try to call and I'm on the other line. This way, we know at a certain day, certain time, we're going to talk about this specific information that's in that email. So basically make it as easy as possible. Yes. All right. So for our fourth tip, keep it short and to the point. So Alex, I know you have some experience with this short. Yeah, of course. No, seriously though, with emails, I'm so tempted all the time to include so much information and, you know, to go on and on and on. But honestly, people don't have time in their day. If you include way too long of an email, they're just going to skim through it. They might have missed out on some important information that you were trying to include. Keep it short and simple. Be very direct, as we were saying. So for our fifth tip, have a neutral tone. You don't want to go in it with, you know, assumptions like, oh, they've been, you know, ignoring me. You want to make sure that your tone is just even and it's not presumptuous. No all caps in your email. Please no. No. Absolutely. I mean, it's very important to make sure that you're staying calm and collected and don't just assume the worst, right? Right. Give them the benefit of the doubt. Stay calm and collected because if not, then you might come off as super pushy or like arrogant and that could absolutely turn them the opposite direction. So for our sixth tip, make it about their best interest. What's in it for the client? Yeah, exactly. I know I've had clients talk to me about how important it is for them to, you know, get things taken care of as soon as possible. And then all of a sudden you don't hear from them. So making them kind of aware that this is really holding up their best interest and for us to be able to accomplish their goals, things have got to start moving. Right. And in my role, typically after they come from your department, they come to me and it's the certain pain point that they've had. Maybe they didn't have a consistent presence online. So they wanted to have brand consistency and they want to make sure that this is all working. So okay. And my email is like, Hey, remember, you wanted to make sure you can evaluate your investment and make sure that is bringing you a return. So you want to make sure we get this call done. Our next tip is be persistent but not annoying. So of course, if you're feeling super frustrated, take a step back, take a breather before you revisit this. But at the same time, you do still want to make sure you're being persistent because sometimes it's just not a good time for people. So having that consistent reminder can be good and can end up paying off by them finally getting back to you. For our last tip, remember, it's okay to follow up for other reasons. In my role, sometimes it's not even something that is set on the calendar. Say they just had a great sell in their store. I may just want to follow up and say, Hey, by the way, you know, how did everything go? Is there anything that we can, you know, talk about post for you? So these things are okay. So, you know, follow up. Yeah, it's important to be proactive. So you don't have to only follow up when you need something. You can just follow up to establish that really great customer service with them. So, you know, if it's after the holidays, you can send them an email and say, Hey, I hope the holidays were really great for you. Or let's say it's a special anniversary. So, Hey, you've been with us for a year. Just wanted to say thank you for your business, anything along those lines to make them feel special. So no matter what the situation is, just make sure you have a plan in place that you can follow with your clients and make it as smooth as possible. So now you know how to follow up with clients. Be sure to like this video and comment down below and subscribe to our channel and ring the bell so that you're notified when we have fresh content coming out. This is The Journey. See you next time.