When you’re trying to acquire new clients, meeting for lunch is an excellent start. However, following up with those clients via email or phone call is just as important, especially if your conversation went well at your initial meeting. Not only does following up help you connect with your client, it can help you find a way to sell those products that are the best fit for what they need. Here are a couple of tips you may be able to use when you follow up.
No Need to Push
Instead of talking about your brand and your services when you follow up, try talking about the client instead. It doesn’t even have to be sales related, and it certainly doesn’t have to have a sale in mind. Talk to them about their daughter’s new puppy. Talk to them about their business trip or how their significant other is feeling after their car accident last week. These are the type of things you should have learned about at your face to face meeting. If you start to push them to sign up for your services from the get-go, you’ll see immediate stiffening. You don’t want your client to stiffen; you want to encourage them to have a friendly, but professional, relationship with you. That may take some email exchange back and forth that doesn’t include any mention of services or sales.
Don’t Delay – Follow Up Tomorrow
Instead of waiting weeks to follow up, wait a couple of days. Let the potential client think about what you had to offer and then see if they’d still like to be business partners with you. If you follow up weeks later, it’s likely that the person you met with will be too busy to even remember which company you represent. Starting over from the beginning when you had a good, promising start is simply not a smart business technique. At the most, you should wait four or five days.
