A Simple Framework To Follow Up with Every Lead You Generate

ASG 069 – A Simple Framework to Follow Up With Every Lead You Generate

Chris Davis: [00:00:00] You’re listening to the All Systems Go podcast, the show that teaches you everything you need to know to put your business on autopilot, learn how to deploy automated marketing and sales systems in your business the right way with your host, the professor of automation himself and founder of Automation Bridge, Chris Davis.

Chris Davis: [00:00:32] Welcome to the All Systems Go podcast, I’m your host, Chris L. Davis, founder and chief automation officer of Automation Bridge, an online publication for small business, marketing and sales automation, where we focus on turning digital marketing professionals and automation service providers. This episode, I want to focus on the follow up system of the significant six.

Chris Davis: [00:00:56] Ok, of just a quick recap. You have traffic capture, you have a present close deliver and follow up is a system that is consistent or exists throughout the mall. There’s an art, there’s an art to create and highly a highly effective follow up. And I want to detail that in this episode, it’s going to be a bit of a different approach than what you may have heard before. But I think it will really help you help give you a comprehensive view of how to put this system in place, the right way to make sure that 100 percent of your leads are getting followed up with 100 percent of the time. So if you’re new to the podcast, make sure that you listen to this episode in its entirety.

Chris Davis: [00:01:44] And what I want you to do is afterwards leave a five star rating and review and and subscribe to the All systems Go podcast launches new episodes every Thursday. OK, and you can find the podcast in all main podcasting apps like Apple podcast, Google podcasts. You can even subscribe on YouTube. So we’re anywhere, everywhere that you get podcasts or listen to podcasts, OK, if you are a listener. Thank you for your listenership thus far, and if you’re not subscribed, please make sure you subscribe. If you have not left a five star rating in review, please do so will be greatly appreciated. If, for whatever reason, you’re struggling to figure out how to leave a review, you can go to automation bridge.com/review and we make it easy for you. OK, so on to the episode of today. And you know, they, they frequently say the fortune is in the follow up. If you heard that one, I want to add to it, I want to add to it today and let you know that the failure is as well.

Chris Davis: [00:02:51] Ok, there’s a great amount of businesses complaining about leads and revenue today and what they’re doing is in there complaining about such with no follow up strategy or system in place. As fundamental as this is, most businesses aren’t doing this and even more are struggling to do it digitally. What is this following up? Can you believe that it’s 20 21 at the time of this recording and we as many businesses are online as many as long as business has existed. There are this is still a struggle point. And I looked at an article from Iasi Sales Solutions and they gave me some interesting data that I wanted to display to you all. This is not just me. I’m not just out here saying small businesses are struggling to do this right. Listen to this data, everybody. This is why you can’t afford you can today’s episode you cannot afford to ignore.

Chris Davis: [00:03:56] Ok, watch this.

Chris Davis: [00:03:58] Two percent of sales are made on the first contact. Just flip it. Ninety eight percent of the people that see your stuff the first time ain’t gone by. It’s not going to happen. Three percent will sign up on a second touch. So just having a reminder, second touch increases about one percent. Five percent will sign up on the third touch. Watch what happens when we go between five and 12. What do you think that percentage jumps up to? I want you to say this to yourself out loud so the person next to you might be like, whoa, why’s he shouted out? Why are they shouting out these random numbers? But what number do you think we went? Two percent for one touch, three percent with the second touch, five percent on a third touch. In between five and twelve, it jumps to 80 percent. Five to 12 touches, your chance to convert jumps to 80 percent. Eighty percent of sales are made between five and 12 touches.

Chris Davis: [00:05:05] Ok.

Chris Davis: [00:05:07] However, only eight percent of sales people follow up more than five times so, so, well, what more what more? LASLEY Three percent of your market is actively buying. Fifty six percent is not ready and 40 percent are poised to begin. OK, so half of the time, all the time people are not ready to buy, only eight percent are following up five or more times. So 92 percent. Are dealing with a max five percent conversion rate like it’s no, it’s no wonder why business can be complicated at times. So if we just look at this, out of 100 business owners, eight of them have a process to follow up more than five times, which means eight out of 100 businesses have an 80 percent chance to generate revenue.

Chris Davis: [00:06:17] Eight, OK?

Chris Davis: [00:06:19] That leaves ninety two business owners out of that one hundred with less than a 10 percent chance 92 business owners. So which would you rather be better yet? Which one are you? Are you in the 92 percent? Are you in the eight percent? Well, guess what, I want you to use this this podcast to get into the 92 percent. OK, and this is why both the fortune and the failure is in the follow up. In the best part about this, I don’t want you to get discouraged by these numbers, I want you to be encouraged because it lets you know that even if you think you’re in a crowded market space, just by following up, you can stand out. OK, the best part about it is it’s in your full control to fix, it’s not unfixable.

Chris Davis: [00:07:17] I recently ran a workshop is a paint workshop that walked through the various phases and stages of creating a follow up system to ensure that you’re following up with 100 percent of your leads 100 percent of the time. Those of you who are listening that are already part of the Automation Bridge Academy, by now, you already have access to this training for free. So don’t worry about it. If you didn’t know, go into the academy, it’s there in the free resources. OK, but I want to point out some of the main themes of that workshop to help you better understand not not just the importance of your follow up, but how to do it effectively and consistently. OK, so I want to it’s going to be three points that I want to bring out. I feel like I usually do. Three. Do you all feel like that? I think is it’s either three or five on the podcast. They just I think is just a number that comes when I’m recording these that that pops up. Right. So the first one is this lead magnets are limiting. I guess I should have I feel like I should be issuing more warnings to you all before I say something, because some of this stuff can be jarring. And the reason why this statement lead magnets are limiting can be a little jarring is because the term lead magnets was created by Clay Collins. And the creation was while it was my time there at Leppitsch, we saw it. We saw it. It was it’s just like tissue. It’s called Kleenex. People don’t say, hey, if it could be a different brand, hey, hand me a Kleenex. When a brand when the name sticks, it just takes over everything. There’s no descriptor. Just leave magnet everywhere. Right. So at the time, nobody had talked about you had traditional, like, loss leaders, you know, things of that free consultations and maybe a free download. Maybe it had been talked about then. But remember, this was back when landing page building was still confusing.

Chris Davis: [00:09:17] So Lead magents became that terminology that was placed on any anything that if you wanted to collect a email address, you needed a magnet. So when I say lead magnets are limiting is is not not necessarily lead magnets themselves, but the terminology because it leads you to believe you have to create something to to give away in physical form our digital form in order to get information. Right. Like, I’ve got to create it. Instead, I like to introduce the idea of capture points. And if you’re only thinking about Li magnets, you miss out on some areas of follow up that are critical to your business. So if we take Li Magnet off the table and just say a capture point.

Chris Davis: [00:10:08] Right, and there’s there’s multiple capture points along the way of the customer journey. I want to focus on the more top funnel, right, the entry points at the beginning of the journey. But if we think about capture points, it’s more broad language and lead magnets are encompassed under that.

Chris Davis: [00:10:26] But I coach businesses of all sizes, some businesses are profitable without a lead magnet. They don’t have a PDF, they don’t have a check list or cheat sheet or a quiz. They don’t have any of that.

Chris Davis: [00:10:40] But they have a capture point.

Chris Davis: [00:10:42] Right, and what this will do is it’ll free up your approach to follow up, as you can now think about every place in your business that you’re capturing information pay to free. It doesn’t matter and ensure you have follow up in place. That’s why I say leave magnets are limited because I need you to think of every way that you can capture information. Some ways you’re capturing information. You’re not giving them anything in exchange immediately, like a like a lead magnet. And because the lead magnet is not attached to it, you’re not even looking at it in the in terms of follow up and it becomes a hole. And now you’re in the 92 percent instead of the eight percent.

Chris Davis: [00:11:23] Ok.

Chris Davis: [00:11:26] All right, you follow. So during during the workshop, one of the most insightful capture points that came to mind that came out, that everybody’s like, oh my gosh, I didn’t even think of that is a contact for.

Chris Davis: [00:11:41] Contact form, you’re not giving away a little magnet, sometimes you guys will have a checkbox to say, subscribe to the newsletter lazily, you don’t even have a Ford newsletter or you if if you do, it’s not valuable. You just it came it came with the software. The website allowed me to do that and integrated with MailChimp. So, hey, why not get leads? Come on now. We got to be intentional with your follow up. Don’t leave it to chance, right? But but but since since people don’t look at it as a capture point, every capture point, not least magnet, every capture point, should have a follow up attached to it. They miss the opportunity to really build out a follow up system and strategy for people who fell out of contact. For most people, they just have some basic messaging and maybe a generic email that goes out. So that’s why I say leave magnets are limiting, because if all you’re doing is focus on magnets, you’re leaving a whole bunch of other captcha points out the picture and all of them deserve and require follow ups and a follow up strategy in place. Right. Second is always follow up specifically related to the reason why they submitted their information. And again, we’re talking front end, top of the funnel. You should have you should always have some form of messaging. And it’s just easier to talk about emails. But you all know, I am not limiting it to emails. Messaging could be in the form of email, text message, messenger bot, phone call. Right. Like there’s so many ways to to message now. I just find myself using email because it’s just easier to grasp if I say messenger bot. Everybody’s like, oh how can I do that. Well, no email is easy. Right. OK, but you should always have some form of messaging following up after every action they’ve taken to help them connect, to make a connection between what they just did and what the next step should be, whether it’s a product or just the next step.

Chris Davis: [00:13:45] Right.

Chris Davis: [00:13:46] So your follow up should be specific to the exact action, the exact capture point.

Chris Davis: [00:13:55] Different caps are point different follow up.

Chris Davis: [00:13:59] Did you see that lazy approach that I just identified right there? Most people just like to have multiple opt ins and whatnot and just dump people into the same process, the same follow up. Right, no, no, you have a follow up specifically related to what they opted in for in third and last. Always have a long term plan. OK, so remember, over half of your audience is not ready to buy. What that doesn’t mean that doesn’t mean they don’t have money. It didn’t say that and it didn’t. It did. It doesn’t mean your product isn’t great. It just means they’re not ready. So you need to have a plan to stay on top of mind for when they are ready. One of the best things, you know, one of my mentors gave me is, you know, you may not they may not always be ready to buy when you’re ready to sell, but you better be ready to sell when they’re ready to buy. Right. And it’s staying in that ready position is one, but two is staying on top of my. And this is a long term plan is, you know, long term nurture things that we we hear of. And it’s it’s interesting because remaining active with your marketing will help, you know, you posting in in in arenas online where your audience is is going to keep you fresh on their mind.

Chris Davis: [00:15:31] But you need to be intentional with the long term strategy specific to the messaging from your business to stay fresh in the minds of those who matter to your business. You have to things change positively and negatively. There may be a shift. Oh, wait a minute, I’ve got some extra funding. And what do you know? They get an email from you. Oh, I forgot. Yeah, let me I can’t listen. There’s two things. There’s two things that people do. I’ve had people go to some previous emails of mine. They I don’t know if they save them or whatever they do and they respond to them like, oh, I finally got time to get around to this. Your latest email reminded me. Right. And then, you know, I’ve got to say, one of the greatest compliments that that I’ve received and I smile every time is when someone says, yeah, I’ve been following you for over five years. Ah, you know, X, Y, Z, because that just lets me know I’m staying relevant. Right. I’m staying on top of somebody’s mind. There are some people that require years to close. What are you going to do? The party has to go on. You can’t just stop and wait there in the 56 percent.

Chris Davis: [00:16:44] You keep on marketing now, move over to the 40 percent, keep on going, and they’ll move over into that three percent.

Chris Davis: [00:16:52] Right. And remember, three percent of your market is actively buying, 56 percent is not ready, and 40 percent are poised to begin. So if you if your follow up just hit the 40 who are poised to begin to start by just the follow up alone, consistence, consistency over time increases the potential market of buyers by up to 40 percent. Forty percent. These are big numbers, everybody.

Chris Davis: [00:17:31] Big numbers.

Chris Davis: [00:17:34] Ok, and and let me say this, we talked about these these three things, right, that the three. To the three ways to help you better understand how to how to build out that follow up right in this framework, and I would be remiss to to not say that all of these steps that I’ve mentioned are preceded by your immediate delivery of what they provided their information for. I can’t gloss over the importance of that as I’m looking over it. I’m just like, oh, skip that every checkbox. Everybody knows that. But I don’t want to make that mistake. And I don’t want you to be offended, like, oh, well, maybe I should know that. No, the first step is deliver, which, whatever you promise, deliver if it is back to deliver that if it is a contact form, get back with him. Right. Like whatever they enter their information for should prompt an immediate response.

Chris Davis: [00:18:37] Ok, so that’s first and foremost.

Chris Davis: [00:18:42] But people can get really lazy after that initial email and not give the follow up system the attention it needs and it truly deserves so. So when we think about let’s put it all together, because I kind of did it backwards on you, I hope you’re hopefully you paying attention now. I’ll say it all all encompassing to make it easy to to understand. For every capture point, you should have at least the following in place, OK, for every capture point you have, at least the following in place, immediate delivery. OK, so whatever whatever you said that got them to enter there, submit their information immediately, respond. OK, so that should really be immediate, immediate response. OK, next, and I’m saying these in order after that immediate response, you need a specific follow up. Relative to what they submitted to information for and then you need a long term nurture, some way, some way to stay on top of mind, OK, and in all, those are at least one four, maybe four, you know, emails up front and then your long term nature, whether it’s weekly or monthly.

Chris Davis: [00:20:06] Right, that’s a level of effort. Now watch this, multiply those phases that I just walk through, immediate delivery, specific follow up, long term nurture by the amount of capture points you have.

Chris Davis: [00:20:20] Ok.

Chris Davis: [00:20:22] And now you start to see why why I don’t preach multiple lead magnets, because with every lead magnet I know of the what the follow up should should be and let me not even stop would lead magnets. Every event that takes place in your business produces segments. Whenever a segment is produced by an action, a contact took. They need to be followed up with we’re starting to see the dynamic nature of the customer journey because it’s easy when I’m talking about capture points, the magnetic contact form, they and whatever whatever they intake form. Right. Quiz, whatever the case is. Right. That’s the front end stuff. And we’re saying follow up with filler contact for maybe the follow up is a media call, maybe there’s a text message, maybe whatever the case is. But now with this understanding that every event that takes place in our business produces segments, every segment deserves to be followed up with, your marketing becomes less effective. Now, when you don’t identify those segments and they get general follow up messaging. OK, so case in point, you registered for an event. At the point of I captured the capture point was registration, I immediately follow up with the confirmation. Check done, perhaps I have a specific follow up to prime you and prepare you for the event. OK, check done, you come to that event and guess what, the cycle starts over because out of that event, two segments were produced. Attended and not attended. Now I need to respond immediately to those segments. With a follow up specific to what they just did or did not do.

Chris Davis: [00:22:34] Right. And as the events multiply and get more and more, you get more and more segments, which means you need more and more follow up. Do you see how easy it is to have follow up holes in your customer journey? And the longer along the path, the more critical these holes are? Because the danger that you risk if you don’t have a fool follow up system from front to from from up from Leegin all the way to customer creation, is that your marketing could potentially be ready and primed them for buying and they buy elsewhere. Because a hole in your follow up. That’s devastating, that is devastating, and it will bring anybody to tears, if you could see that, if you could see the amount of people who come to your business, you enlighten them, you educate them, you bring some awareness to them, but they don’t buy with you. And it’s all because at some point, maybe on the maybe in the beginning, your follow up game was strong, right? And then it tapered off because you weren’t aware that all of these events that are taking place are creating segments and all of these segments need to be responded to immediately and they need to be responded to immediately, specific to what they did. And it’s ongoing throughout. The customer journey is only ongoing throughout the customer journey. For those of you who want to create a personalized customer journey, which which, again, the most profitable process online in business is a personalized one.

Chris Davis: [00:24:23] So it’s.

Chris Davis: [00:24:27] What what I want, I would say this. It’s enough getting started, getting one in place, and by one, I’m talking about just one process, it is it is more than enough getting one process in place from start to finish. Right. And having a a fully optimized follow up strategy to couple with it. Do you now see all that it takes to build that out? I hope. I hope hopefully you do. And now do you see how you split your focus every time you increase your capture points? Because every capture point you’re introducing, again, a different follow up.

Chris Davis: [00:25:06] Perhaps the events are different. Right, there’s just more to measure, more to build, more to do. So let’s keep it simple, let’s keep it simple, efficient and effective.

Chris Davis: [00:25:22] And let’s follow up with every single person from this point on, if you were wondering if you’re the type that wake up wakes up and you don’t know what to do, so you just start responding to emails, jumping in on social media and zazie like you wake up in the morning just going 100 miles per hour. That was time to sit back and get intentional with your follow up. Now it’s time to sit back and get intentional with your follow up. OK, so if you want more insight to the steps I gave you, the overview, as good as this was, this was just the overview. We went through the actual flow chart, what it looks like, what you haven’t seen, even even in the in the workshop itself that we’re adding is how to take those efforts and evergreen them. Right, so you can really have it have an extended onboarding for for the for the leads that come in that’s profitable and they don’t know what, you know, when you went from automated to to live sending. Right. There’s a way to do that. There’s a way to convert, you know, your manual and live efforts.

Chris Davis: [00:26:38] We didn’t talk about living automated. But there’s a way to leverage your live efforts to turn him in automated to generate more, more revenue. So if you want more insight to the steps and to take for that for that from that aspect to to get these follow up points, we’ve got a follow up checklist to make sure that you at a minimum, there’s five pieces that you should have in place for every business that you’re following up fully. Right, so if you want more insight to the steps to get that stuff in place and guidance, you can you can purchase the workshop at Automation Bridge Dotcom for follow up at any time at your leisure. It will not break the bank. Go there, check out everything that that has offer. This podcast did a pretty comprehensive job explaining it, though. When you do, what I’m going to do for you is give you 30 days of complimentary access to my private community to help you learn. And just so you can get help along the way with implementing it.

Chris Davis: [00:27:41] Ok, deal.

Chris Davis: [00:27:42] All right, so if you want that, it’s their automation bridge dotcom for follow up and and who who needs to hear this? Let me let me ask you this. I might help you out today. Who is that business that you entered your information for into? And they did not follow up in a way that you thought was was was good enough for, say.

Chris Davis: [00:28:05] Right, it happens to me all the time, especially service based businesses. Oh, the follow up game is terrible. You are I’ve heard me on my soapbox about attorneys because they are the worst offenders.

Chris Davis: [00:28:18] Right.

Chris Davis: [00:28:20] Who needs to hear this, who needs to be thinking beyond lead magnets for their follow up?

Chris Davis: [00:28:25] Ok, digital marketers, including everybody included. OK, think about that. Identify that person, share this with them. OK. Friends don’t let friends automate irresponsibly, we just don’t stop what we do.

Chris Davis: [00:28:43] So if you found value in today’s episode, now is the time for my first time listeners. I want you to subscribe. I want you to join the family of listeners, savvy small business owners, that every Thursday when a new episode comes out, their ears are peeled to this fresh content. And as you can see, this is actionable stuff you put in place and it will work. I promise you it will. OK, so if now is the time that I say, hey, here’s your seat at the table, the family, the the all systems go family table, here’s your seat. How do you claim your seat? Subscribe leave a five star rating and review. It will be greatly appreciated again, if you’re struggling leaving one, you can go to Automationbridge.com/review. Right now, this podcast will continue to play in the background of your device and you can leave that rating and review and we’ll take care of getting it to the appropriate platform for you. Here at Automation Braze, we’re dedicated to training digital marketing professionals to become automation service providers. We don’t we don’t just talk marketing jargon. Right, these these are people who are proficient in extracting your process, really defining what that process is, streamlining it, knowing the technology that’s offered, combining your strategy with the right technology for the responsible deployment of automated systems in your business for rapid growth. That’s what an automated service provider does, training them up as we speak. If that is you, if when I talk about this stuff, you get a little tingly or you get some goose bumps, like, man, it’s so good. How did he know those are good signs that you might make a great automation service provider if you’ve got that digital dirt under your fingernails. Right.

Chris Davis: [00:30:44] From just the all of the labor of implementation on the front line of the marketing implementation on the front line of small business.

Chris Davis: [00:30:53] This is for you.

Chris Davis: [00:30:56] Let’s get a proven framework for you to follow. Let’s let’s get some accountability and support for you to shorten that learning curve. OK, some of you, that means not just implementing at a higher efficiency, but higher price as well. Maybe just shaving off four hours a day of implementation is what you need, right, but don’t go looking for what I’ve already compiled for you. I’ve got a proven framework that will teach you Step-By-Step how to deploy these systems for businesses. So if that’s you if you want to if you want to explore more, I want to invite you to go to automation bridge dot com for Slash Aspey to take the next step and talk to myself or someone on my team to assess if you be a good fit for one of our program offerings. I feel led to say this a lot of times I see people disqualify themselves, they either disqualify themselves because they think they’re not ready or perhaps they’re just not willing to invest in themselves. I want to caution you from that from that approach, one of the biggest aides to my business growth has been mentorship in every form of mentorship that I’ve received has been uncomfortable. It’s never been a comfortable oh, hey, oh, 100 dollar mentor. What are you going to give for 100 dollars? Let’s be honest, though, that’s what you may be looking for unintentionally. What are you going to give, 100 dollars? What kind of mentorship are you going to get? Better yet? What kind of advice are you getting from a free group? No knock against free groups.

Chris Davis: [00:32:35] I use them. I participate in them all the time, but I keep them in the proper context and perspective. I’m not growing a business off of group. I’ve got to get in and get integrated. I’ve got to have somebody show me the way. So if you like, for me to show you the way again, check your finger nails. You got some dirt up under there. Are you are you you ready to get dirty? You ready? Get those nails dirty automationbridge.com/asp. We are also looking for guests on the All Systems Go podcast. Some of the some of the interviews I have recorded thus far. Oh my goodness you are. We’ve got some heavy hitters lined up. Do you know somebody that will make a great guest? Go to automation bridge.com/guest or send them to automationbridge.com/guest and submit their information. OK, SaaS owners, people who who have built software and scaled small business owners who have put systems in place to scale digital marketers who specialize in a particular area of systems building and automation, send them over. Let me ask the questions to extract value for you to apply and implement in your business.

Chris Davis: [00:33:58] Ok, all the show notes and podcasts are accessible to automationbridge.com/podcasts. You can subscribe there to listen to other episodes at your leisure and get access to every resource or or software that we’ve mentioned there always be in the shallows of their respective episodes. So until next time I see you online, automate responsibly reference.