Whether it’s a matter of making the most out of your marketing campaign and improving your ROI or capitalizing on word-of-mouth referrals, never let a lead slip through the crack—they could be your next diamond in the rough. Every single lead you receive through your business should be considered that one magic client who can help you elevate your business, taking it from where it is now to where you want it to be. The power of follow-up is immense and should be considered one of the best friends of bootstrapped budgeters.
First, it should be noted that trends indicate positive results when business owners verbalize their follow-up efforts with their prospective clients as “reconnecting” instead of “following up;” it’s much more personal and will help you achieve a better business relationship. For example, “Hello, this is Derek Heck from Bootstrapping Blog and I’m reconnecting with you in regards to our last conversation.” Pretty simple right? Yet countless business owners fail to do this on a daily basis. It’s similar to neglecting to insulate your pipes or letting a leaky faucet go unchecked—it seems minor at the time, but you eventually end up losing a lot of money through this type of negligence.
Or perhaps you do have good intentions and plan to follow up, but just haven’t had the time. Well, I’m sincerely asking you to burn your Procrastinator’s Creed contract and jump into action. If not, then your lead goes from blazing hot, to lukewarm, to somebody else’s client! Plus, by following up promptly, you will be telling your prospect volumes about how you’ll treat them as a client, meeting deadlines on time and providing a close watch over their account. Remember, clients don’t just want to know that they’ll get the service or product they’re buying, they want to know that they will be comprehensively taken care of.
So what’s a good timeframe for following up? Probably about a week later. You don’t want to come off as a telemarketer selling jewelry cleaner and calling back the next day. Let them breathe a little and have time to look over your proposal. And make sure you set a solid date and time, indicating when you’ll be reconnecting—call them exactly when you say you will! And make sure they actually write your appointment down when you plan it. Don’t be afraid to specifically ask them to get their planner out and write it down. If you don’t, you’ll end up getting more flakes than a bowl of Wheaties.
And how about a “blind” follow-up? You won’t always have the opportunity to speak with your prospect in the initial phase. For example, you may receive a lead through your website—if someone signs up for your newsletter. In this case, you should develop a standard follow-up template or autoresponder. Remember, the Web is faceless and without emotion—you need to constantly think of ways to reach out to people and remind them that there’s an actual human behind your website
Here’s an example a website lead follow-up:
I see that you visited my blog at www.bootstrappingblog.com recently. I hope you’ve been enjoying our content and have been able to apply some of what you’ve read to your own business.
Call-to-Action Paragraph.
And in case you missed it, I thought I’d pass this article along:
“It’s nothing personal.” Bullspit! There’s no such thing as nothing being personal in the business world. No matter who’s involved in a business equation, people are either spending money they worked hard to earn, or are looking to earn the other person’s money through hard work. Unless you’ve won the lottery, any blood, sweat and tears poured into your business makes the scenario very personal. Read Full Article
Please feel free to contact me and let me know how I can help you with your business. I eagerly welcome all inquiries.
Now go get ‘em tiger!
At some point in your life you may wake up with a feeling of despair. One where you just can’t bear to continue with your current business project, speak to the same people, and do the same monotonous tasks.
When Marcus Buckingham, author and motivational speaker, works with someone facing this problem, he asks them three important questions:
Why this business? What is its broader purpose?
Who are you working with?
What exactly do you do with your business?
By exploring these questions, you can isolate the real reasons you are unhappy with your business. Often we can be enchanted with the idea behind our work or with our employees, making us loyal to a business that is not meeting our personal needs
The people you work with may keep you working a business with no opportunity for expansion. You may like preparing documents and giving presentations, but you may no longer care about your business’ mission or goals. Dedication to a business helping people may keep you working with doctors and nurses you despise.
These questions will help you gain a deeper understanding of your relationship with your business and what you really value from the experience. These elements can help you reassess what you truly wish to accomplish and possibly create an entirely new business model.
Doing what you love seems deceptively simple. We should know what we love, but we often confuse this with what others expect us to love, what we do to fill our time, and what we merely like.
Our friends, family and society have expectations of us which vary greatly. If you look at practically any program on television, you will see what society currently expects us to want and love. These images influence our behavior, even if we do not completely understand it.
Sometimes we are pressured to make our hobbies into more than they are. My friend Jen is a crafter in her spare time. She has a flair for making adorable dolls, but once she started taking commissions, her hobby became a chore. In this case, Jen didn’t really love what she was doing. Making dolls was a pleasant time filler, but it was little more than that.
When you truly love what you do, you get a sense of joy the moment you begin. Something you love will energize you and make you feel better about yourself, what you’re doing and life in general. Loving your business will bring harmony into your life; in and out of your workplace.
If you know you love what you do and are still working at making it a business success check out the article titled “From Passion to Profits”.
Ever forget to close the door behind you and have someone ask if you were born in a barn? Well here’s a situation where it’s finally a good thing to leave the door open, your marketing. Always make sure your marketing is creating an open door to your business. Have an amazing product or service? Well it doesn’t mean diddly squat if your marketing doors are closed and your just not getting through to your prospects. Here’s a marketing tip or two for the bootstrapped budget and holy-overhead-Batman budget alike.
First, we call your attention to word of mouth marketing (WOM). Sure, you’ve heard of WOM before, getting new business through referrals and people talking about your business. But what most people don’t think about is actively encouraging WOM business, thinking that it’s more like a mythical beast that you simply come upon deep within the forest. Although WOM marketing’s effects can lay dormant for a long time and then rear its mysterious, budget-beautifying head months or even years after someone referred your business much like a mythical creature awakened from its slumber, it’s a very real approach that should be continuously infused in your marketing.
How do you start lucratively gabbing about your business? With an elevator pitch. We’re not suggesting that you grow your hair out, perm it and carry a soprano saxophone around with you at all times, but more like developing a business pitch that you can deliver within the length of an elevator ride (30 seconds to a minute)-short and sweet. You may know the ins and outs of your business better than anyone, but if you can’t convey exactly what you do with concise confidence on demand, then your prospect is going to wonder how the hell your business has survived thus far.
Start out by getting a laser beam on your unique selling point (USP), that which separates your business from your competitors, and then dress it up with a few accompanying sentences that support that USP. Here’s an example:
“I own a business resource called BootStrappingBlog.com devoted to empowering the bootstrapped businessperson to their full potential. We’re dedicated to providing ongoing contributions of the latest in business news, resources, tips and advice-anything and everything necessary to help bootstrapped businesspeople not only survive, but surpass their goals and enjoy themselves while doing it!”
Caveat: Fight the urge to sell every point of your business-if your pitch is longer than a Kenny G song, then you’re going to lose your prospect as fast as a teenager runs away from one of his melodies. The whole point of your elevator pitch is to chum the waters and cause your prospect to come to you. Tempt them with just a quick business pitch and then wait for them to feed on their own curiosity, letting them come to you when their interest is piqued and they desire more information about your business.
Another aritcle of interest: People buy benefits, not features
Wondering why you should be listening to the “fresh prince” about the keys to life? I’ll tell you why. Will Smith has an interesting video on youtube where he explains to the Nickelodeon Kids Choice Awards audience his two keys to life. After talking about Will Smith in the Pursuit of Happyness in the Don’t let anyone (and I mean anyone) steal your dreams article I wrote, I seen this video in Leo from Zen Habits‘ link tumblr page. Watching the video really had me think about things a bit and in this article I want to touch on the two keys he mentions and talk about what I think about each, and why I think these are two real keys to life.
Running is the first key to life
In the video, Will explains that the reason for this is because when you run, you have this little voice in your head that tells you “I’m too tired, I have to stop running. If I only walk for a second I will regain my composure and can run again. I wish I could just sit down” (paraphrased in my own words). He says that if you can conquer this voice when running, you can conquer this voice in anything that you do in life.
I couldn’t agree more. Regardless of the way you want to give the analogy, that voice in your head, which is based on fear, doubt and insecurity, will run your life until the day you die if you do not learn to conquer it early on. Running is definitely a great way to overcome this voice and has many benefits.
The Benefits of Running
Will Smith touches on the fact that overcoming the voice telling you to stop when you are running is the reason why running is beneficial and I don’t disagree with him but there are many other benefits as well.
Health Benefits – I put this first because I figured since most people like to skip over this fact of life, I wanted to make it stand out more here. RUNNING or ANY FORM OF EXERCISE is a great health benefit. Not only will running help you keep the weight off but it is also great for stamina. At the risk of saying too much, I will just say that stamina is a great thing for any man out there and you should pay attention to it more. (Sorry ladies if you found that offensive – contact me and tell me you did).
Running will also help your lungs open up which improves your breathing and good breathing can be very beneficial to concentration and relaxation. Ask anyone who meditates or does breathing exercises and they will tell you the same thing. Try it and I bet you’ll see the great results.
Freeing Your Mind – I know a lot of people talk about how walking helps them to relax their mind and free their thoughts. The same goes for running. When you run, you can think about many things but for some reason, to me at least, it seems to help me not ‘think’ about much at all, in the sense that I am not stressed about the things I think about. I actually get a lot of great ideas when I am jogging/running and always carry a tablet of paper and a pen with me. The writing might be horrible but I can read it so thats all that matters.
Anyone who is in business for themselves can comment on this and say that their life is at times a bit more stressful then they’d like. Running is a great way to remove a bit of that stress and free your mind for greater things. Looking at a screen all day will make things start to look like tunnel vision, so running is a great way to release some of those things and see life in a better light.
Reading is the second key to life
Will Smith then goes on to explain that reading is the second key to life and again, I don’t doubt that for a second. Anyone who is successful in business will have at least ONE good book they’ve read that helped put them in the right mindset or on the right track to making their dreams come true. I read Bootstrapping Your Business and that influenced me to start Bootstrapping Blog and write about the art of bootstrapping.
Anything you can read from Thomas Edison, Bill Gates, Richard Branson, or Benjamin Franklin will give you so much knowledge for life and business that you’d be upset you hadn’t read it earlier. Reading not only solves problems you might be going through, as Will Smith talked about, but it gives you a few more benefits as well.
Knowledge is Power – OK, I know everyone has read or wrote this phrase more than once in their life but it’s the truth. When you know more, you can do more. When you understand laws after you read a law book or study in law school, or study a CSS design book, when you are done reading, you will by far know more then you did before you read the book. The same goes with great blogs like Zen Habits, Pro Blogger, Skelliewag and Freelance Switch.
You’ll have the power to do so many more things in business and in life after you read these blogs and authors.
A good real-life example of this is that before I read the zen habits tumblr page, I didn’t know anything about this video or that Will Smith even said these things, but now, I am writing this very post because of it Knowledge does indeed give you power.
Better Communication – When you read, you will learn proper grammar (if the person writing it displays it, that is) and will learn a vast amount of new words. These skills will help you out in every day conversations with family, friends or co-workers. Your friends will laugh, or stare at you funny if you use some larger words in a conversation and they are the type to use a lot of slang terms or are the “myspace crowd” so-to-speak. I get a kick out of putting a 5 syllable word into a sentence instead of a 4-5 letter word just to play with people, its fun.
If you are in business for yourself, you normally are the name and face of your business and if you come off to your clients as ignorant or less-educated, you will surely lose many potential jobs and sales. I’ve seen many sales pitches with grammar mistakes that shouldn’t have been made, by writers who were selling their freelance writing services. This is unacceptable and easily avoided by reading more and learning more.
Why Will Smith is a Genius
Normally, people will give you some B.S. approach to succeeding in life, wrapping a cheap e-book page around it and slapping a $100.00 price tag on it while you have legitimate success stories (yes, I consider Will Smith a success story in himself) who give out great knowledge like this for free every day. All you have to do is open your eyes and ears while closing your mouth. Pay attention, you’ll thank me for it later…
Am I the only one that listens to what Will Smith and other stars say and grab the useful information from it like this?