As small business owners, one of our challenges is following up with potential clients after providing a proposal.

It’s easy to assume when you haven’t heard back from a contact that they don’t want to work with you. They found a better offer, your price is too high, or you didn’t present the information well, etc. While occasionally this may be true for the most part it isn’t. And, unless you follow-up you can continue to think of all the reasons why they haven’t gotten back to you or don’t want to work with you.

A few years back the value of follow-ups was reinforced with four clients over a short period of time. Two were new clients that had been given proposals and quotes and hadn’t heard back from. The other two were clients that other work had been done for and who had mentioned in conversation about other work they might need doing.

In all four cases, a follow-up resulted in them each confirming their intention to move forward with new work. Even if only one, two, or four had decided to move forward with the work they needed doing, following-up would have been worth it. Fortunately, all four decided they wanted to move forward with the work. Of course, this isn’t always the case. But chances are if we don’t follow up some of the business, we might have gotten had we followed-up will never materialize.

WHY FOLLOW UP IS IMPORTANT

Following up with potential clients makes sense, even if we don’t get the business, because by doing so…

• We then KNOW the end result and have an opportunity to ask “why” if they decide to not move forward or to go elsewhere.
• We have an opportunity to EVALUATE our proposal and client interaction to determine if their was anything we could have or should have done differently or if this was simply a matter of “you win” some and you “lose some”.
• We may learn information that could prove valuable in PREPARING future proposals.

KNOWING IS BETTER THAN NOT KNOWING

All in all, knowing is much better than not knowing. I’m grateful to my husband who is usually the one that asks me some of the hard questions I don’t want to hear but need to hear. Questions like, “Have you followed up with… on the proposal you sent them?” I know I shouldn’t NEED to be asked but sometimes I do. And it’s the same question I ask my clients. It may not always be the question we want to hear, but it is often what we need to hear, and then take action.

Not following up with clients is likely to lose us business as our competitors will win when they follow-up. And even if the competition doesn’t follow-up, our clients’ great plans and intentions sometimes get shelved for another day that never comes when no one follows up with them. A phone call or email or face-to-face appointment may be the best way to connect with clients to get an answer or feedback about a proposal. Some follow-up is better then no follow-up.

So bite the bullet and take the time to follow-up or contact Tiger Eye Solution to get the help you need with your follow up. In the overall analysis, it’s an important part of taking good care of your clients and provides important feedback, not to mention potential cash-flow, for your business.