A couple of months ago a referral partner said he had a new client for me. I love when this happens, we all do. We met with the prospective client together and had a great meeting. The prospect asked great questions and we hit it off. SWEET. I had just finished working with a client so had room in my schedule, this was perfect. I followed up, sent the information for my contract and then the hesitation began. We stayed in touch but the prospect wanted to talk to a potential mentor/coach for the work we’d be doing together.
I pinged the prospect a couple weeks later as had been discussed. Come to find out the mentor was willing to help with the work we had discussed, but the prospect really liked me, which is AWESOME. It’s nice to be liked, it’s better when they like you enough to hire you and give you their money though!
So, I followed up as I do, thanking them for the opportunity and made a suggestion based on a comment in the email. And then…I got a response “I really like you, would you be willing to meet with me monthly to advise me on some strategy for this project?” And just like that I went from losing a client to gaining a client.
I will never exhaust of telling you the importance of follow up. But also: be gracious when you think you lost a client, you never know how it may circle back in your favor.
I agree completely. It is so important to stay positive and professional. I wrote on the exact same subject today as well; but in a different context. You can read that post here: http://wp.me/p3nLpj-h1
One tragic example of why you want to remain positive and professional is that you never know what is going on in their world at the time. I had been talking to a potential new client over a couple weeks and all of the sudden, he went silent – for weeks. When we finally reconnected, he let me know he and his wife had lost their infant daughter. Under normal circumstances, the reason for the silence is not that sad but it does prove the point why you should never go negative when contact has been lost.
Thanks for a great article.