The importance of following up
We all know that we should follow up on leads and after meetings, but it often doesn’t get the priority that it deserves. I know how busy you can be and for some of you following up just doesn’t make it up your priority list. For others, it’s one and done – get a lead, reply and that’s it if you don’t hear back.
If you want to profit more without more marketing and advertising, listen to this new 8-minute episode for some perspective on following up.
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Below is a full transcript. If you have any questions about anything in this, or any of my podcasts, or have a suggestion for a topic or guest, please reach out directly to me at [email protected] or contact me via text, use the short form on this page, or call 732.422.6362
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– The importance of following up, this is one you really need to hear. Following up is one of those things that anybody that I speak to will agree that it’s important. But so many people that I speak to in the industry are not doing it. And there’s plenty of reasons why: you’re too busy, you don’t want to bother people, I hear all the excuses. And what it comes down to very simply is: following up is your responsibility. Following up is going to get you more business because in our industry, most people are working with leads that have come in to them. It’s not cold calling off of a list, it’s not going around knocking on doors. It’s people that have already expressed an interest, and now you’re just trying to get those people to the next step. And here’s the crazy thing, it’s so much easier to follow up on leads that you’ve already gotten and convert more of those, than to get new leads. Because your marketing is only going to bring in as many leads as it’s bringing in. It’s not going to bring in any more unless you change something about that, and quite frankly more leads is not what you need.
What you need to do is work the leads that you have better, because that kind of following up from someone who’s already expressed an interest, not just in your service, but specifically in your company providing that service. It’s so much easier to convert that lead if you’ll just work it better and more. We do a lot of secret shopping, I just finished doing secret shopping and it was a venue and four of their competitors, and not one of them tried even a second time. And to me, that’s throwing money out the window. If you’re not even trying a second time for people that have already expressed interest in you. For those of you that are thinking, “Well, but I’m bothering people.” No you’re not, you’re not. Put yourself in their shoes. You are a consumer, you go to somebody’s website, you fill out a contact form, and the company doesn’t get back to you immediately, like within seconds and I don’t mean an auto reply, I mean a real person replying. And you’d go about your life, you go about your work, you go about your family, you go about doing what you do. The company responds it could be minutes later, hours later, whatever and you’re busy. It happens, right? Life gets in the way.
So you don’t respond right away, and then they don’t follow up again, but you’re busy doing other stuff, right? What if the next day they reached out again and said, “Hey, I just want to make sure you saw my response from yesterday, I’m really excited to help you with .” Would you think they were being aggressive, or will you be like, “Oh that’s right yeah, yeah, I want to know more about that.” For most people it’s going to be, “Thank you.” “Thank you for putting yourself back up at the top of my list here”, because now I get to pay attention to this again, because they started this. So following up, the question is how many times should you follow up? And how should you follow up? And I address all of this in a few of my books, including my latest book “Why Are They Ghosting Me?” And again, ghosting is them not responding to you, so you respond to them they’re not responding back to you. Doesn’t mean they’re not interested, too many people just give up way too soon.
Following up is your responsibility, and following up is what leads to your profitability. Because if you would convert more of the leads that you’re getting, you’d probably be able to raise your prices some as opposed to trying to get more leads. If there’s one thing I hear from salespeople all the time, or people that even don’t consider themselves salespeople, but wedding and event pros is, most of you get too many leads and you’re inundated, and you can’t follow up with those leads because you’re getting too many of them. And then you tell me that’s why you don’t follow up, again not a good reason. Not a good reason to not follow up because you have too many leads, when there are things you can do in your marketing to reduce the number of leads that you’re getting.
I’ve addressed pricing on many other podcast episodes here, but one of the things you can do to reduce your number of leads is to put some ideal pricing on your website, and not a starting price. Please don’t just do a starting price, starting price is the cheapest thing that you have, it’s the thing you don’t want to sell. And you put that number on your website, you’re going to get inquiries for that thing that you wouldn’t want to sell. So, as price range would be my favorite if you’re not going to put all of the prices. And it’s okay if it’s a wide range, as long as it’s a realistic range. And put a range for the people that are most likely to be inquiring, or you can put full pricing. I had one of the other episodes I did on pricing, somebody reached out, sent me a link to her website, and it’s got pricing right there. It says right at the top of the page, “Transparent pricing”, it’s a venue. Here’s our prices for Saturday, here’s our prices for Fridays and Sundays, contact us for pricing for weekdays. I have other people that have full pricing on their sites.
For a lot of businesses, I’m not a fan of full pricing because I do want them to reach out to you to get more information. I think it makes sense for that particular venue, because you’re just renting the venue with whatever comes with it. And then all the other services you still have to get besides that from other people, which she actually gives you pricing information for them as well. So following up, you get an inquiry, I want you to work that lead, and work that lead, and work that lead till you get a yes or a no. Because those are the two acceptable answers. A yes is the best answer. A no is an acceptable answer because we have conclusion on that, we have closure on that particular inquiry. If you get no response from someone, you don’t know if they still need what you do and just got busy, or someone took ill, or they’re working on finals at school, or they’re on vacation, or the boss sent them away. You don’t know if they still need you or not. And every time I have my clients reach out again, and again, and again, the more times you reach out, the more business you’re going to get from people that have already inquired. Not getting more leads, the ones that have already inquired. Many people tell me that it’s their fourth, fifth, and sixth reach out to people that actually gets them the best response.
And I know for some of you that’s overwhelming, but the reality is if you want to do more business and be more profitable, work the leads that your marketing is already bringing you, that your networking is already bringing you. Work those people better, you won’t have to get more leads, you’ll already be getting enough leads over there. But following up is extremely important, and it’s your responsibility, not the customer. Think about yourself as a customer again, is it up to you to go to somebody and say, “I want to buy?” Well, you made the inquiry, it’s up for them to ask for the sale. But following up is asking to continue the conversation that the customer already started.
You’re not trying to start a conversation, you’re trying to continue the conversation that they already started by filling out your form, or messaging you on The Knot or WeddingWire, or through social media, or something like that. They’ve already started it. So, I’ve said this is the easy thing again, if you just follow up one more time than you are now, you’ll convert more of those people. If you follow up one more time than that, you’ll convert even more. So unless you’re getting resolution on every inquiry that’s coming in. You’re getting a yes or a no, you’re leaving money on the table because some of those people that are not giving you an answer will give you an answer, and some of those answers will be yes. I’d like to hear your stories of success when you follow up at least one more time, share them.
I’m Alan Berg. Thanks for listening. If you have any questions about this or if you’d like to suggest other topics for “The Wedding Business Solutions Podcast” please let me know. My email is [email protected]. Look forward to seeing you on the next episode. Thanks.
Listen to this and all episodes on Apple Podcast, YouTube or your favorite app/site:
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- YouTube: www.WeddingBusinessSolutionsPodcast.tv
- Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3sGsuB8
- Stitcher:
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- iHeart Radio: https://ihr.fm/31C9Mic
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