Transcript

Did you collect a ton of leads at an event and you’re not sure how to follow up with them? Hi I’m Carmen Sognonvi, keep watching because in this video I will show you the three things you need to do to make sure that you are following up on leads in the right way.

By the way, if you would like to get a list of the seven tools I rely on to do all the marketing of my business, head on over to carmensognonvi.com/tools. I will tell you everything from who we use for graphic design and printing and I will also tell you about a mobile app you can use to track your flyer distribution.

So you collected tons of leads at an event. So you are feeling pretty good about yourself, but you are not sure what to do next. I have three ideas for you, but before we can even get to those ideas, we need to make sure that you set things up the correct way in the first place.

If you haven’t already watched my video on street fairs, be sure to check it out. Because in there I explain why it’s important that you’re not giving out promotional junk at your booth and what you should be doing instead is giving out a free sample or a free trial for that person’s contact information.

Ideally you want to be delivering that sample at a later date so that you will have a reason to get back in touch with them. So when you are actually doing the fair, you want to make sure that you have already offered them an irresistible trial or sample.

Alright, let’s assume that you did that correctly, what do you do next?

Number one is to send a short note that night or the next day. So if you really want to stand apart from all of the other businesses that they met at that event, you want to follow up with them right away.

Now this first follow up doesn’t need to be a full on sales pitch. But what it is it’s just a brief note saying hey, it was such a pleasure to meet you today or yesterday at blah blah blah event. I just want to let you know that I am going to be in touch with you in a few days to deliver you the sample or the giveaway.

And in the mean time here is a link to our website where you can learn more about XYZ product or service that you offer. So what we actually do in my business is I have this all set up in our CRM system. So we use Infusionsoft and it’s really easy in Infusionsoft to create a web form, an internal webform, that just has name, first name, last name, email address and phone number.

When we come back from the fair I have my staff enter all of that data using that internal webform and then I have programmed that webform to automatically send out a text message and an email message to that lead as soon as they hit enter.

And so that way, on our end, it’s not us typing out all of these emails, it’s literally just filling out some information into a form and then hitting submit and immediately that person gets a text and an email.

So if you can implement a similar system, that will allow you to do this much more efficiently.

Number two, add them to your email newsletter list. So when you are actually at the event and you have them filling out their contact information on their form, be sure that that form actually has a little line that indicates that by putting their information on this form, they are agreeing to receive your email newsletter, because that way you are securing permission from them.

But it’s really important that in addition to doing sort of one-on-one follow up with leads, you are also adding them to whatever long term nurture sequence you have in place for those leads.

So in our case we do a weekly email newsletter. I would encourage you to do the same if you are not already doing that. And so even if we totally drop the ball and do nothing else, I know that at the very least they are subscribed to our weekly email newsletter.

So you want to make sure that at the time you are entering these leads into your database, they are also automatically subscribed to your long term nurture sequence or your weekly email newsletter. Those are kind of the same thing in the business that you are in.

Number three, call to fulfill the sample or trial. If you set things up in the way that I described where you are capturing the people’s contact information in exchange for the trial or sample, then now you actually have a reason to follow up other than just hey, buy something from me. Right?

Because you have made them a promise, hey I’m going to give you a free sample or trial in exchange for your contact information and now the reason you are calling them is to actually fulfill that trial or sample.

So in the case of our business, whenever we do a street fair, we give away two free weeks of karate or kickboxing classes. So when we, after we enter the information into our system and they got their little note, hey it’s great meeting you. Here is some information about our programs. They also get automatically entered into our newsletter.

Over the course of the next couple of days we could actually take our time and calling each person and making an appointment for them to take their first free class.

So, you’ll find that when you collect leads at an event like this, not everyone is going to actually take you up on your offer. And it may seem a little weird to you because you are like, wait, I’m giving away free stuff. This is awesome.

But sometimes people just aren’t ready to take advantage of it. So don’t be surprised if you only get like say one out of ten people taking advantage of it right away. It’s totally normal.

And the beautiful thing is because you already entered that person into your long term nurture system, they are going to be hearing from you.

You are going to be given the opportunity now to develop that relationship. And I can tell you that in our business it’s very often happens that people have been on our list one year, two years or maybe even three years after we meet them at an event and it’s actually at that point that they come in and sign up for a program.

So don’t be alarmed if you aren’t converting all of these leads into customers right away, even into trials right away because sometimes people just aren’t ready to take advantage of it yet. It doesn’t mean you are doing something wrong.

So how many times should you follow up? I would say that you should follow up at least three times to offer them the free sample or trial that you talked about at the event.

So you want to reach out at least three times to fulfill that sample. If they are not responsive after three times, give them a little rest. It’s totally fine because know that your long term nurture sequence or your weekly email newsletter is going to take care of building that relationship with the clients so that when they are ready to purchase, they are going to think of you first.

All right. If you found this video useful, be sure to sign up to get email updates from me. You just have to go to carmensognonvi.com/newsletter and sign up there. And if you have a question you would like answered in a future video, just send your question to infor@carmensognonvi.com.

Okay, it’s time for some shout outs. We are doing some Instagram additions. I want to shout out to Loretta Williams Gornell, Carlos A. Ponte Jr. and Hustle Management. I have added their profiles below, so be sure to check them out. They are all people doing cool things and to the rest of you, thank you for watching.