Lately, we’ve written a lot about making money in the niche of your choosing, whether that’s tennis players who want to stop losing, or start-up coaches who want to streamline their businesses so they can make a bigger impact while enjoying the perks of business ownership (and anything in between!).
Once you’ve defined your niche and done your research about their main challenges and desired results—all in their own words, of course—you’ll likely offer your leads a free gift that begins to solve one of their main challenges, while opening the door for you to present your coaching programs as the avenue for even more, bigger results.
We could go on and on about the free gift idea. In fact, there’s so much to it that that’s a whole different blog post!
For now, we want to focus on what you do after someone takes you up on your offer—when he or she goes from being a warm lead to an even warmer lead.
You follow up.
Okay—that’s easy, right? You knew that.
But did you know that a single follow-up email or contact is simply not enough to inspire your ideal prospects, your warmer leads, to become clients?
Think about this:
How many times do you follow up with a prospect after that initial contact?
Did you know there’s a scientific formula that outlines the ideal number of follow-up contacts?
That number is 5.
Yes, 5!
Because we believe the numbers show it best, here’s a graphic we developed to illustrate just how important it is to follow up 5 times after someone downloads your free gift:
Do you see what we see?
Only 2 percent of prospects will convert into clients with a single follow-up contact. That number increases to 10 percent by the fourth contact but jumps to 80 percent by the fifth contact.
That’s right: 80 percent of prospects convert to paying clients after the fifth follow-up contact!
Meanwhile, almost half of entrepreneurs never follow up—not even once. And a whopping 90 percent give up after the fourth follow-up.
Which means that 90 percent of entrepreneurs are leaving money on the table because they’re not converting prospects that very well could become their next paying clients.
Here’s where things really get good: we’ve heard from lots of start-up coaches that they feel “pushy” or “salesy” or “sleazy” when they think about following up multiple times after someone downloads their free gift.
After all, if they’re interested, they’ll call, right? Wrong.
This isn’t personal. It’s not pushy.
It’s a buyer’s pattern. Period.
Our goal with this blog post is to help you shift your mindset: to help you realize that following up multiple times is a necessary part of your sales process. If you want to reach more of the people who need you, it’s key that you follow up 5 times.
You know what’s really SUPER-cool about this? Most likely you’ve already met your next paying client … you just haven’t followed up enough to help them see they’re ready to convert!
Most prospects simply don’t convert to buyers until after you’ve contacted them 5 times, and most entrepreneurs give up far too early, leaving money, opportunities, and potential impact on the table.
Now, you may be wondering what you should say in each of your follow-up emails.
Of course, we have you covered. We’ll talk about that in our next blog post, Your 5-Part Follow-Up Sequence: What to Say to Increase Your Conversions (Part 2 of 2). So stay tuned!
Meanwhile, sign up to receive our complimentary 3-part video training series, “Your Coaching Business Blueprint: Everything You Need To Know To Get Your Business On Track.”
You’ll learn the pattern you may be stuck in, which can sabotage your own efforts to reach your full potential and accomplish your goals, the 3 S’s to your success and why it’s critical to master all 3 (most coaches only master 2), and where your business is leaking money.
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