Face it, you are not Publisher’s Clearing House carrying around a car-sized check for thousands of dollars. People are not dying to hear from you.
But sometimes you really want to get in touch with a prospect because you know they are shopping around and you want to follow up. (You are following up aren’t you?)
Email and voice mail are the dynamic duo of follow up. You are typically following up with prospective customers during the day when they are least likely to be available by phone. But unless you are willing to stay late, or your follow up can wait until the weekend (usually it can’t), you need to work with what you have.
What you have is voice mail. You also have email if you were savvy enough to get it during the initial contact.
You don’t want to come across like a stalker, so you are not going to call every 20 minutes and never leave a message. You probably don’t have time for that anyway. I recommend that when your prospective customer isn’t available by phone that you leave both a message and also shoot them an email. It’s like caffeine and a 20 minute nap. The combination is more potent than either on it’s own.
The voice message has a higher likelihood of reaching the prospect if she is out and about. But some people don’t listen to their voice mail in a timely manner. The email will be waiting for them when they get home. Some would say doing both is too aggressive or pushy. I say if you are doing it right you obtained permission to follow up in the first place (you did get permission didn’t you?) and by using both channels of communication you are better serving your prospect. You are serving them because you are attempting to make it easy for them. You are giving them options to communicate on their terms, not yours.
Their terms. Because you are not carrying a giant check.
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