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Client Followups is getting Clients Interested.

As per the analytics, on an average 70% of your IT companies business comes after taking regular follow-ups. It is also one of the things that show your level of commitment, maturity, and professionalism to the new clients. Some clients intentionally do not revert just to check how serious you are with the business.
So given the above fact, the process of follow-ups becomes the second most important process in converting the client, first, of course, being your “first impression” i.e. requirement gathering.

How do we take the followup?

The most professional manner is to email them. Some of the more aggressive strategies may be to ping over WhatsApp, send continuous SMS, stalk them on social media and finally repeated calls.

The biggest turn off for the clients is the way most people take the follow-ups.

Clients feel like the receptionist of a busy waiting room where people keep asking for updates.

And what do we ask the clients, the same old and standard lines “Hello Sir, how are you? Is there any update for me?”; “Hope the email finds you in best of health. Any updates on our last conversation?”; and so on. Now ask yourself if you were in place of your client would you bother opening or reverting to such a mail every time? You know there will not be any value addition after opening the email or reverting to it. As a client, there is nothing which might strengthen his knowledge about the product or the platform he is going to enter.

When I see a candy I would like to have it!!

What if you could change this traditional thing and provide your client with some valuable content. Clients need to know that every time they open your email they will have something useful and interesting to read which will enhance their knowledge and will be helpful. Even if he does not reply, he would at least read your email and keep you in his mind. One way or the other he will definitely come back to you and give your business.

To switch off the Alarm you need to find the phone.

To find the solution, let’s start by targeting the problem, this scenario generally arises after you have gathered the requirements from the client. You have got the chance for your first impression, be it email or a phone call or a Skype call, it is considered as your first impression (How to improve your first impression is explained in another article). The possible reasons to clients not responding could be:

1. The client is not satisfied by the way you have gathered the requirement, this arises mostly because you have not asked the relevant questions;
2. Maybe he is not confident that you are the right person for his need, generally because you might not have had the confidence in your voice/tone of email while communicating;
3. Maybe he doubts your knowledge about the genre and domain of the project, it is generally seen when you don’t show depth in your knowledge about the app and don’t spend sufficient time discussing the idea or suggesting some good add-on functionality.
4. And finally the most common of all problems, he does not like your quotation.

So how do you solve such challenges? Don’t worry it is not a rocket science if you noticed then all these problems have something in common and i.e. client is not confident about you, for one or the other reason. So now let us simply target that.

A well informed mind never losses in a conversation.

To develop confidence in the client’s mind, it is very important to flaunt your knowledge. Here are the four things that will help you win client’s confidence:

• Your understanding about the domain: How deeply do you know about the field that the client is going to enter? Who are his competitors? What are the current strategies and innovation happening in that domain?
• Your understanding about the complete flow: How many kinds of users will be there (Admin, Super Admin, End User, etc) and what exactly will be the possible actions by them?
• Your approach towards the project: Provide some suggestions which will help your client stand out of the market, which will help him engage user better and some innovative solutions.
• Relevant reference to his product: More relevant the reference, the more confident he gets.
• And yes, most important is the confidence you depict in your voice and tone of emails.

These are the things which help you win clients without even competing with others. Provide him quality and he shall be yours.

You must be complaining that who has time for so many calls and after-all the problem started with him not picking your calls. Well, who said anything about calling them. If you get a chance to speak to your client, well nothing better than that but in 80% of cases, people prefer to be emailed and that is where you would generally communicate.

Focus on helping people and people will start helping you.

Provide your clients with valuable information and something they could use. Even if you don’t win the project you will definitely win their heart and word-of-mount is the best publicity. Here are some tricks to make your clients confident about you through your emails.

Summing up in these 4 steps:

Next time, when you take a follow-up, make sure to do these things. It will take 5 extra minutes of your time but you need to do it every time and your follow-ups will be much more fruitful.

1. Send your follow-ups with around 3 value adding points, not too details and not too many, just brief, to the point, pointers.
2. Pointers should highlight:
   • Competitors and their winning strategies,
   • Also tell them about the unsuccessful tried-and-tested strategies,
   • The innovation happening in the field
   • The current challenges,
   • Suggestions from your end to counter those challenges
   • Suggests to help usability of the product,
   • Gaps in understanding the end-user and if client missed some point while describing it to you,
3. Use some tools like MailTrack to check if your emails are being opened, for how many times and when. This will help you in scheduling your email accordingly to get the best result. Again use tools for scheduling your emails.
4. Send your emails in an interval of 2 days. It will help in giving enough space to the client and sticking to his memory.

All the information you will need is readily available on the net, you just need to hit the right “enter”.

Try this strategy and be patient if not in first, or in second then definitely by the third email you will get a reply. Even if you don’t get a reply, you will be in his “good-companies” list and he will come back to you or refer you in his circle. Either way, it will be a win-win scenario.

So all the best. I will be sharing more articles covering the complete flow from Client requirement gathering to delivering the project, stay tuned!!

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