Ever have this happen to you?

A potential client emails asking for your sessions details and then you never hear from them again.

OR…

A potential client contacts you, you exchange a few emails, it seems promising, and then you never hear from them again.

Yes?

Now, let me ask you this…how many times (and how many ways) did you try to reach out to them?

Once? Maybe twice?

Did you feel like it might be seen as pushy or annoying if you emailed again?

(or, gasp…called!)

We recently learned about “the spotlight” effect from the lovely Jenika of Psychology for Photographers.

Wikipedia says, “The spotlight effect is the phenomenon in which people tend to believe they are noticed more than they really are.”

As it relates to our example here…YOU may feel like it would seem waay too pushy to reach out to them again, because they OBVIOUSLY must have seen your messages and still have you and your studio on their mind.

The fact is, they may have missed your emails or have forgotten booking a session entirely!

Yes…it’s true.

Now, what would be the worst thing that could happen if you reached out to them again?

No really.  Think about this for a moment.

If someone has expressed an interest in your services, you want to ensure they have all the information they need to make a decision and you want to make it easy for them to book (and remind them of the dates you are available).

Will you annoy some people?

Perhaps.  But if you annoy them, chances are they weren’t going to be your clients anyway (nothing lost!)

Will you book some people who wouldn’t have?

Here’s a little story from the weekend.

Our last classes  started yesterday.

On Friday, we sent out an email announcing the winners of our giveaway.

Registration was closing Sunday night.

We wondered…should we send another reminder to people on the class VIP lists?(after all…they *had* indicated they wanted extra notices about the classes)

But, would we annoy some people?

Would people unsubscribe?

Yes my friend, I am certain we DID annoy some people (sorry!) and yes, some people did unsubscribe.

BUT, it was also the reminder that over 75 new students needed to sign up(I see I’m not the only procrastinator among us! haha)

Should we have emailed everyone on our email list on Sunday?

Based on the number of “oh…I missed registration, can I still sneak in??’ emails, perhaps we should have! 😉

As for those who unsubscribed, there’s a pretty good chance what we offer isn’t a good fit for them anyway.

So.  Remember to look after YOUR people.

Follow up.

Make sure they have all the information they need.

(This goes with clients who have expressed an interest in wall art or albums but never get around to ordering them!)

And remember the spotlight effect… because while we are the center of our own world, we are not the center of everyone else’s!

(side note: if you don’t like doing in-person sales but you want to sell wall collections, a new service just came out called “Swift Galleries*” – we haven’t tried it yet, but it sure looks promising!)

So my challenge for you tis to examine your follow-up process.• How many times do you reach out to an inquiry?• How often do you follow up with past clients to let them know about new openings/promos?• Do you have a method of regularly following up with clients? (ie: monthly newsletter?)• Can you add in some more steps?  (I’ll bet you can!) 🙂