Why Bookkeepers Need a Follow-up Process
Why Bookkeepers Need a Follow-up Process.
SO! Through the use of Social Media and your Bookkeeping website you have a heap of new leads… now what?
There is one, simple concept that will revolutionize your Bookkeeping Business. In fact, this one simple thing is so basic most bookkeepers overlook it completely—and that oversight is the source of almost all your sales and marketing problems. That concept is Creating a Follow-up Process.
When you start a new Bookkeeping Business or even if you have an established Bookkeeping Business, your primary focus is on spreading the word across the market and once that’s done, potential customers pull up their socks to get associated with your business. But that is not the end of the story!
No matter how many people you attract in the first place, they will never convert into your customers if a Follow-up Process is not fulfilled. Bookkeepers who don’t Follow-up on their customers are leaving a lot of money on the table.
Why Bother Creating a Follow-up Process?
- 44% of small business owners give up after one follow up with a prospect (we all know this stat is work when it comes to bookkeepers – more like 66% when it comes to bookkeepers)
- 10% of business owners make more than three contact with a prospect then give up
- 80% of sales close between the fifth and 12th contact point
- This means 90% of small businesses are missing out on 80% of deal closing opportunities simply because they don’t follow up on a consistent basis
- Moreover, 8 out of 10 prospects prefer to talk to sales reps via email over any other medium
One thing most bookkeepers overlook is that if you run a Bookkeeping Business or are an entrepreneur you are also your own sales rep. So the reality is if you want your Bookkeeping Business to succeed you either need to hire a sales rep or need to just Get Over It and create a Follow-up Process.
How to Get Over It and Get into the Follow-up Mode
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Address Your Fears
Are you afraid of rejections? You think contacting people multiple times is hassling them? You hate the idea of ‘Selling’? You do not know how to ‘Sell’?
As a Bookkeeper YOU are your business – you need to come to terms with this and VALUE yourself and your skills. What else is stopping you? Many bookkeepers have had a bad relationship with the concept of money. To address such fears we have created podcasts and blogs to help you overcome this – listen to our two part podcast series with Melissa from Talking Money to help you put these fears to rest.
Follow-ups make customers feel special and therefore this increases the reliability process for the customers. A regular Follow-up always gives customers a chance to be heard and engage effectively. Follow-ups can be a great source to ask customers, “What they want/expect next/what you can do better.”
Customers usually want a medium to get in touch with the company. Therefore, the Follow-up process enhances this communication. A Follow-up call is always required after conducting a marketing campaign to the people who called just to enquire. You might just get a lead! Existing customers receiving Follow-ups are more likely to go for the new services than the ones without.
- Change your perspective
If you’re afraid of coming off as spammy and pushy in your Follow-ups, we are about to explain why that logic doesn’t even make sense.
If the lead has booked in a time to speak with you then they want to speak with you and are looking forward to your call. If a lead downloaded your Lead Magnet, again they are willingly giving you their contact information to be contacted or followed up by you.
Be mindful, your clients might have a lot of things vying for their attention and chances of your email getting lost or forgotten under a massive pile of other emails is pretty high. Follow-ups is a chance of getting their attention amongst this.
Another reason why Follow-ups are so important is because people will need to hear from you an average of seven times before they finally decide to purchase something from you. That’s right. Seven. (source: Hubspot survey)
That means that sending an email once is not enough. It also means that if they don’t respond the first time it doesn’t necessarily mean they aren’t interested. They’re just busy. Or, maybe they just haven’t heard from you enough yet, which is why you need to remain consistent with Follow-ups.
- Create a Follow-up Process and STICK TO IT
It’s simple! Just set reminders or automate and there you go to manage all your scheduled lists.
Our main objective is to make communication easier and simple. It is an initiative to maintain an effective communication network with your existing bookkeeping clients, prospective leads and people within the organization. It is a movement towards managing calls on the go!
With all the tools available at your disposal these days, Follow-ups don’t need to take a whole lot of time. Here are some of the ways we at Savvy Automate Follow-ups in our business so that we ensure they are getting done without wasting time.
- Automated email marketing after a demo, sales call or Lead Magnet is sent. This is a part of a sales funnel that was created ahead of time and runs on autopilot
- Weekly content via our blog that is sent out via email and social media platforms
- Automated emails after a client call that are tailored to the specific needs of the prospect.
- Create Follow-up templates and tweak depending on the lead (check out our easy Business Plan & Strategy Templates to help you with this)
- Use tools to schedule manual Follow-ups in advance eg Website, Hubspot, Mailchimp, Gmail etc.
There are tons of ways to make sure your Follow-ups are getting done. The hardest part is creating the content and getting everything situated in your email marketing system. Once that’s done, it all runs automatically without you having to touch it and it’s still very effective.
In our previous podcasts and blogs, we have talked about the Importance of Workflow Automation On Your Website, on our The Bookkeepers’ Voice podcasts and about how to Streamline Your Bookkeeping Business with the Help of Your Website. Talk to our Savvy team today to find out how we can help you automate and streamline your Bookkeeping Business.
Conclusion:
Consistent Follow-ups will put you ahead of the game.
Create a Follow-up Process that suits you and your Bookkeeping Business the best. Whatever, it is, you need to HAVE a process – when you follow up on a whim you are basically letting your leads slip through your fingers.
If you stay consistent with your Follow-ups then you’re already ahead of half the people you may be competing with. You know what that means? The more you Follow-up, the more you increase your chances of making money. Once you look at how Follow-ups work in a sales funnel and the data to support them, you quickly realize that Follow-ups are an important part of making money in your Bookkeeping Business.
Don’t make the mistake of leaving money on the table because you’re too afraid to Follow-up.
The best way of creating a Follow-up Process you can stick to, is by automating as much as possible. By automating your sales processes, you will not only make your job easier but will get more lead wins with less effort. Stay tuned to find out more.
In the next episode we will go into detail about how you can create Follow-up sequences, Automated Emails and Email Templates to streamline your sales process.
Angie
Link to talking money episodes
- Episode 1 https://thesavvybookkeeper.com.au/Podcast/how-to-manage-money-in-a-small-business/
- Episode 2 https://thesavvybookkeeper.com.au/Podcast/how-to-change-your-beliefs-about-money/
Extra links :
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