There are times you are deeply invested in the new client and are very excited to work on their project; you have the confidence that you can deliver the best results compared to others. The whole of the excitement turns in to confusion, followed by annoyance when you release that the prospective client has not reverted anything back to you in the past many days.
1. Clients Don’t Respond At Once
When you meet a client and showcase your work, they seem super excited to work with you but later they neither approach you nor they respond to your emails. The reason behind this wired behaviour is that they have their own business to run and their clients to deal with. Further, with so many different emails appearing in their mailbox that they completely forget about your proposal. Let’s take a look at the do list that one should follow while sending a gentle follow up email sample.
2. Be Determined but Not Annoying
Clients are very busy people, most of the time they read emails but then forget to respond. You need to send then a few samples to follow up email to a prospective client but don’t seem too annoying. At the same time do not bother the client too much on the call. If the client sounds busy then it is not a good move to keep the client engaged on call for long, instead; if you wish to gather or inform small details then to drop a precious polite follow-up email sample or text them. Also, try to avoid requesting them for repeated face to face meeting.
3. Be Open to Pick Up the Call
Usually, professionals prefer to interact or share information solely on emails. In the majority of cases, it works perfect, but when it comes to dealing with an unresponsive client, then emails may not be the approach to reach. This is so because emails can be easily missed or ignored. In this situation making a small phone call will make them remind of you and that you are waiting for relevant information for them.
Some businesses prefer making cold calls over emails or any other marketing tactics. Cold calling is a marketing process in which you create a list of prospective customers along with their contact numbers and then approach them through phone calls. People who opt for cold calling are advised to make use of best cold calling software. This makes the task convenient and more effective in achieving output.
4. Automate Things
It’s not that only clients are busy, in fact, you are also very busy in running your business, and if you experience that you are chasing a lot to keep up with different customers, then automation can be of great help. In simple words, automation can save a lot of time spent on sending emails to different clients. In some situation, the CMS system or some of the best lead generation tools can be used for sending follow up emails to clients.
How the question that arises in the mind of the majority of people is how these tools work? Well, these tools regularly track the emails that have received a response and keep on sending follow up emails for which response is pending.
You can set the interval between two to follow up emails; this should be done very smartly to avoid making the follow-up emails look annoying. There are some of the best telemarketing software available to make this task easy.
5. Keep the Clients Informed
For streamlining the process, it is suggested to make the client informed about every progress made on the project. Sending a precious email informing the client helps in keeping a record of communication. This way if any improvement or alteration is required then clients can spot that at an early stage.
This will eliminate the need for rework. Make sure that the email must be precise so that the client doesn’t feel that reading emails is consuming a lot of time valuable time, but at the same time, it should cover all the essential information.
6. Follow Up Only When Required
There is a situation when the client sends a response to your email, but it may get stored in some other folder like spam/trash, or you miss out the email. Sending follow up emails to clients who have already responded to your email will create a negative impact on the client. Hence, before sending the email makes sure that you check your emails very carefully. Also, send follow up emails when it is required don’t just send emails just for the sake of it.
7. How long should one wait before following up with the clients
It is not easy to identify a fixed time interval after which one should start sending follow up emails. No two businesses or no two clients have the same attitude or requirement, then how the same time interval can be decided for sending the follow-up emails.
You don’t want to lose a protective client by making him/her feel that you do not have much interest in the project. At the same time sending emails one after the other will make you look too desperate and client get annoyed. Let’s take a quick look at some of the basic guidelines:
- The first and the foremost deciding factor that follows up must be designed keeping the fact that how far the proposed client meeting is scheduled. One can do a follow up immediately if the meeting is scheduled the same day or can do the same in the next two to three days depending on the meeting spot.
- After you have sent the proposal to the client give them at least a week time to analyse the proposal and then revert back to you.
- Ensure that the email must be written in a very polite way, so that client doesn’t feel offended. Also, the format of the emails must look very professional in gaining the client’s confidence.
Keeping these simple tips in mind and following them helps in creating an effective follow-up email for prospective clients.