What makes a great follow-up system in your business?

Client relationship management (CRM) is a system that helps you follow up with potential clients and also keep in touch with past clients that might come back. This helps you grow your database when you’re networking with potential new clients or people that might refer you to great business. Thus, you want to make sure to have a scanning system for your business cards when you meet people in public. You also want to make sure this is synced with your client relationship management system, ECRM.

CRM—this helps you streamline your business.

Networking

When you network, you’ll need to have a follow-up system already set in place. This is because timeliness is crucial. Say, for example, you go to an event and get ten business cards—following up with each of your new contacts should start immediately after the event. Otherwise, they may end up forgetting they had even met you. Make sure to include an invitation to a one-on-one meeting through Zoom or in-person in your follow-up email. This is the key to following up and also closing clients.

If they do not want to meet in person or have a Zoom call, keep them on your email list. When the lead goes cold, try having them subscribe to a monthly email newsletter instead. 

Sending Newsletters

Newsletters are amazing because they help you grow your business in your sleep. A monthly newsletter will help you grow your business by educating people and cementing yourself as an expert in the industry.

You want to make sure that you are giving value when you send out a newsletter. If you’re not giving value, you will just end up getting an unsubscribe or getting put into a spam folder. You do not want to be put into a spam folder because this puts a warning on your domain. Every domain has a score on how reliable its emails are in people’s inboxes. Communicate with the individual to see if they received your email. If they didn’t find your email in their inbox as it somehow made its way over to spam, make sure to have them mark it as not spam.

Additionally, when you are sending attachments, do send attachments, images, or links in your first email. Their email provider will most likely let your email into their inbox and not end up in spam.

I always make sure that people add me to their contact list if I’m going to send them information back and forth. I also ask them to reply to my email as this trains their email to recognize you as a safe contact. By adding you to their contact list and replying to your emails, they ensure that all future emails and newsletters from you are going to their inbox.

Booking Your Meeting

You’ll want to use some sort of software to organize your meetings. Calendly is a free app that I highly recommend, though many alternatives can get the job done too. These apps are integrated into your emails to make the booking process simpler and quicker.

In Drive Traffic Media’s case, we have a dedicated calendar that syncs to clients’ calendars so it blocks out any times that have been booked. This makes it easy for somebody to look at their calendar and also yours to book a time to talk with you.

Needing Assistance

If you do not have time to do the follow-up system yourself, you should consider employing two things: a personal assistant and automation. These two go very well together when it comes to having a great follow-up system.

Personal assistants are very useful as they can look through your contacts as you get them, have them filter out the bad ones, and have them do the follow-up for you. They also compose emails and newsletters that are eye-catching while following proper email etiquette. An automation service will then take these emails and send them regularly and en masse so your list can continue to grow even without your constant supervision. 

Just make sure to keep an eye out for bounces and spam—if people are telling you to take them off their email list, make sure to do so as you can get flagged as spam if you’re not paying attention. A well-managed email list is gold, so try and limit your contact list to people who want to read your content.

If email marketing doesn’t work out for certain contacts, you can always have your personal assistant book meetings through the telephone too. Each person has a different way to communicate, and having a telephone system set up as well is a good way to be inclusive and have a system that works for everybody.

Need Some More Help?

If you’re looking for more assistance on CRM such as learning about automation and hiring a personal assistant, we are an expert on email marketing in Orange County that can offer our services. Please click this link to find a program that would be perfect for you.