The Follow-Up Framework That Still Closes Clients [2025 Replay]

And so what I wanna do today is allow the original episode to play in its entirety because the information in there is still really good, and it's actually like a really good starting place for you to write these emails, put them out into the world. Then once the episode has played, I'm gonna come back and give you a 2025 approach if you are ready to uplevel these emails. Now, if you're interested in buying my follow-up emails, I do sell them in the Systems Shop, and they are only $9.

So go ahead and look in the show notes if that is of interest to you. And now here's the episode. All right, y'all, I'm going to start with a question. Let's say that you've had an amazing consultation call with someone or someone has filled out your contact form and they feel like they are a perfect fit for your services and what you offer. So you decide that you want to make an offer to them. You send it out and you hear crickets. What do you do? Are you following up?

And if you are following up, how many times are you following up before you give up and just archive that inquiry? That's what we're going to talk about today. Hello, hello, and welcome back to the Business-First Creatives podcast. I love talking about follow up emails. It is like, if I could pick one thing to be known for, it would be the follow up. Because so many of us have an innate fear of rejection that it stops us from following up with people that have seemingly ghosted us.

Now, I'm not saying that the things that we're going to discuss today, are going to help you close each and every lead that come into your business. Because the truth is you are probably still getting wrong fit leads. You are getting people, that are going through your website or seeing you on social media, and even though there are a few red flags or they're not quite the right fit for you, they're still filling out your contact form.

And then you are still going to get some people that you have a consultation call with them, and there don't seem to be any red flags. Like they still seem like they're a good fit for your business. So you send the proposal, you make the offer, and then you never hear from them again.

But what I want to make sure that we all realize is that those people ghosting you, and those people getting on a consultation call with you, you know, telling you that they're ready to work with you, and then you send the offer and you hear nothing, should not define what you do in your business to follow up with all inquiries. Every single inquiry that comes into your business, you should be following up with them a minimum of three times. Let me say that one more time.

Anyone who inquires with your business, and that you have actually made an offer to work with you, you should be following up with them at least three times. Now, some of these followups are like really small things. Like you send them an automated email 24 to 48 hours after the initial offer to be like, 'Hey, I sent over that proposal that we discussed. Just want to make sure that you got it'.

It takes absolutely no effort from you to set that up in your CRM and in most of them you can do it automatically. You can have it to where it watches the proposal or the smart file or the brochure or whatever it is that your CRM calls it. But when you've sent the offer, if they haven't committed by filling it out, signing your contract,' and paying your deposit, your fee, whatever it is, your CRM can automatically send them an email that's like, Hey, just making sure that you got the offer.

If you didn't let me know and I'll send it a different way'. That is like the least pressure follow up that you can do. And in fact, I would argue that by sending that automatic email 24 to 48 hours after someone has told you they are interested in working with you, you are actually doing a service for that client. Because you don't know for a fact that the proposal actually landed in their inbox. What if it went to spam?

What if you made the offer and you didn't realize that they had a typo in the email? What if the email gods were just not on your side that day? And for some reason, it just didn't get delivered. You have no way of knowing that someone got it, opened it and just ignored it. Because I do want to say 1 thing about the tracking that's happening inside of a lot of these CRMs. I don't know if you guys know this, but email providers like Gmail are now scanning incoming emails looking for viruses.

And what you may not know is that Gmail scanning that email is tricking your CRM into thinking that your client actually open that email. I have seen it with my own eyes. I will have my email program, Gmail open in a different tab, and I will be testing my systems because, hey, everyone should be testing their systems before they make them live for an actual client. But I'll be testing and it will all of a sudden say, you know, sent one minute ago, opened one minute ago.

Well, guys, I'm still, I'm still doing what I was doing. I haven't been to Gmail. I haven't opened that email. I haven't looked at it, but my CRM has already indicated that the email has been opened, which in fact is a lie. That was Google scanning it. That something else was happening behind the scenes, but I definitely had not opened that email.

So, I just want to say, if you are using that in order to determine if your potential clients, your leads are opening your email and just deciding not to work with you and just closing the email, that in fact is not an accurate way to do this. Now. If you've sent a proposal and you can see in your CRM that they've actually clicked the proposal, that is in fact accurate. I have not come across anything where if a CRM says that a form was clicked, that it wasn't in fact clicked.

So, every time someone opens your offer and opens the proposal by clicking the button, and they don't immediately book with you, if you want to assume that that means that the offer wasn't right for them or that they found someone else or that they just don't want to work with you. I mean, I still don't think that's accurate, but I will give you points for, you know, looking at your data and making a decision.

So the one thing that I want to talk about today is that no one should assume if you send an offer out and you don't get an immediate acceptance, you haven't heard back from them in 24, 48, 72 hours. I don't want you to assume that it means that person doesn't want to work with you. People are busy. We all have lives. Even people that I am excited to work with or that has an offer that I know is closing on like a particular day.

Sometimes life just gets in the way and I forget to complete the proposal, to sign up for the course, to do whatever it is that I intended to do. I mean... I feel like I don't really have a brain anymore. All I do is drive. If that's happening to me, I know that that's happening to people that are in my audience, my potential clients, my leads and so forth.

So the first thing that I want to encourage you to do is to not make the assumption that someone doesn't want to work with you if they don't immediately say yes. So if we can get you to have that mindset, what possibilities does it open for you to feel comfortable following up with them? Now, I do want you to do it in a very easy way at first. Uh, there are some people that would say you could do follow up text messages, you could give them a call.

I'm going to admit that I'm not that kind of person that does feel a little aggressive for me, but also depending on what kind of offer you have, depending on whether or not your audience would prefer a follow up phone call rather than an email is something that you need to determine for myself and my audience. For the majority of my follow ups, an email feels good.

So, I've already told you what follow up number one is for me. 24 hours after someone has received the offer from me, so they've gotten the proposal, it has the contract attached, it has the invoice, all they have to do is fill it out, and they are booked. If I have not heard back from them in 24 hours, my system automatically sends them an email that's just, hey, making sure you got the offer. If you have any questions, please let me know.

I have also started adding a, if you have decided not to work with me at this time, please let me know. And I will close out your inquiry and make sure that you don't receive any additional. Follow up emails. Now, for some people that may have not been interested in following up with you, they've already decided not to work with you and they just don't want to hurt your feelings. Those people might actually be inclined to respond to that initial time.

Automatic email and say, Oh, I have decided to go in another direction. Can you close out my inquiry? Because you are warning them that if they do not acknowledge that they have decided to work with someone else, that you are going to continue to send emails. So some people will give you closure just so that you don't send any additional follow ups, which is fine with me.

Like, I don't really mind if I've chatted with someone and I thought they were a good fit, but they decided not to work with me. I look at it as a blessing in disguise because if someone hears my offer. And gets on a consultation call with me and sees everything that I can do for them and their business, and they don't want to work with me. That's okay. That means that I wasn't the best person for them, and I don't want them to work with me and it be a bad fit.

Like, to me, that's worse than them just saying no. So that's my first follow up. My second follow up occurs either 24 or 48 hours after the first follow up. Now that email is not automated. I take the time and exactly 5 minutes guys, like I don't literally set a timer, but. Like five minutes is my max.

I will take five minutes and customize an email template that is going out to them, that is asking them if they have any hesitations, can I answer any questions for them, goes back over whatever the offer it is that I made to them. And then I add a little bit where I am telling them how I can solve their specific problem, what their business will look like on the other side of working with me.

And to be honest, that's different for every single person that comes into my business because I am customizing that part of the email, depending on what kind of issues. And fears they have indicated to me on the consultation call, or even in their contact form, like, whatever they are really feeling, whether it is an urgency to get this done, because they're overwhelmed with their leads or whether or not.

You know, they had an instance where they couldn't get the client to fill out the client questionnaire, and they forgot to follow up. And then they showed up at a session and didn't know anything about their client. Like, everyone is usually experiencing something that is making it worthwhile for them to get this problem solved right now. And so whatever it is that they told me, I customize that email. So again, not automated, customized in less than five minutes, and then I send it.

The third email is an email that I can't actually take credit for, but it's actually the email that gets you the most closures. So I really wish that I had written it, but I didn't. It is a magic email. And if you want, if you Google magic email, you will see it has an entire website dedicated to it. But basically the line is, I haven't heard back from you. Your priorities must have changed. No response is necessary. Guys, I know that sounds rude.

I don't exactly send my magic email just like that, but I think it gets the point across. And what it does is it usually pushes someone to give you closure. Now, I will admit, in most cases, it's not that they're going to contact you and immediately be ready to work with you, but Most people don't like to be seen as rude. So when they get that third email, when they get that magic email, they're like, Oh my gosh, I'm being so rude.

I should just let them know that I am not going to be working with them. And so you get a response that's like, I'm not ready to work with you at this time. Thank you for following up. And then, you know, to close the inquiry and not follow up anymore. I mean, they are doing you a service by telling you this so that you don't waste any additional time and resources on that lead. And I soften the email just a tiny bit.

I say, I haven't heard back from you, so maybe you've decided to go a different direction. I am going to close out your inquiry so that you do not receive any additional follow up emails. If you change your mind about working with me in the future, please reach out for updated pricing and availability. So I've done a couple of things. Number one, I told them I'm not going to waste any more of my time following up with them.

Number two, I've let them know that if they contact me in the future, I might not have the same availability and I might not be the same price point. That usually gets people to do one of two things. If they're interested in working with you, but they just haven't had the time to fill out the proposal or do whatever it takes to commit to the offer. Oh, they usually do it right then. Or they send me an email that says, Oh my gosh, this just fell off my plate.

Um, when I get home later tonight, I am going to fill out this proposal and finish the booking process. Thank you for reaching out. That's one kind of email that I get. The other kind of email that I get is one that just says, yeah, I'm sorry. I decided to go a different direction or I decided that it wasn't in the budget to get this done or I'm going to try to continue to DIY my services and when I get a bigger client roster, I will reach out to work with you then.

I mean, those are the kinds of email responses that I get to the magic email. Man, y'all, I told you it was a good episode. It still has some really juicy information about how you can set up a follow-up system inside of your own business. But what has changed for me from 2023 to 2025, each of those three emails that I described to you, I still send with one big difference. Every single one of them has a mini case study inside of it.

Because the power of social proof and case studies and client transformations is what gets people to buy your service. The very first email that I send 24 hours after I have made an offer to someone is actually a snippet from one of my clients, Maddie Peschong She was on my podcast and I took the opportunity to to write an email to kind of go through her transformation. Initially, she didn't think that she needed an entire setup from me. She only wanted, in her words a fancy proposal.

But once we actually did her strategy call and we took a deep dive. Look into her systems, she started to see all of the holes, all of the places where her client experience could be better with some additional communication, some additional information for her clients. And so that is what email number one looks like to me now. Now, does it still have some of the same language? Oh hey. I sent you an offer 24 hours ago just popping in to make sure that you received it.

Of course, that is the purpose of the email. It still includes that part, but it also includes information on that case study as well as two different ways that they can look at the case study if they'd like. They can either listen to the podcast episode or they can click over and read it on the blog. My second email is actually extremely similar. It is a case study from a different client, but this one focuses on automation.

It focuses on how much ease my client got after working with me to where everything was laid out, and she was no longer babysitting every single step in her client experience. And again, I invited them to listen to a podcast episode or check it out in a blog post. Now the third email that I send does still have the magic email touch. It does still say, Hey, your plans may have changed. Maybe your systems aren't as important to you as they were when you first contacted me.

Um, if I don't hear from you by end of day, I will close out this email. And if you would like to work together in the future, please reach out for updated pricing and availability. So what I told you before is all in the three emails, but now I am really focusing on more storytelling and more highlighting of client transformations.

So now that you've listened to the original episode and you've heard my new 2025 take, if you will, are you ready to implement some follow up emails inside your business? I sure hope so. You can either take this information from this podcast and run, or if you're like, Hey, Colie those emails sound really good. Don't forget, you can get them inside the system shop and they are a whopping $9. So visit the show notes and there's a direct link. All right. That's it for this episode.

See you next time.