Guest Post:  Jen Fitzgerald

Many people ask me: “Jen, how do you do it? This follow-up thing is hard!”

Here is my first piece of advice: don’t try and cram in all your follow-up in one day. Space it out so that people are not inundated with you at first and then you fall off the map. Make sure to follow up with them more in the beginning, but then spread it out over time and don’t feel as though you have to follow-up with everyone on the same day. If you have your customer contact times spread out in your client database (or however you track your customers), then you won’t hit overwhelm mode.

My second tip is make sure to let people know they will hear from you again. This way they expect to see an email or get a phone call from you. Make sure to tell them when they will hear from you again, whether it is from a newsletter or new catalog coming out or just a personal email to say hello.

Third: If you know of local meetings going on, make sure to invite your local customers. It can be an event you are putting on or just something fun in the area – could be a fair, concert or festival. Just the fact that you think of them enough to tell them about it or invite them tells them that you care. Let your contacts know that you are going to be there and to look for you so that you can say “Hi” and catch up.

My last tip is to be consistent. Nothing is worse than when you are really great at the follow-up and then they feel as though they don’t matter anymore because they have not heard from you in several months. Create a plan on how you are going to stay in touch and then have a system in place to help you stick to that plan. Systems mean you are automatic — reminders will pop up, newsletters will go out, etc.

I hope these tips will help you to not be overwhelmed and know that follow-up is a process that is on-going. Once you get your systems down, you will begin to see your referral rates go up and your business will begin to take off!!

Jen Fitzgerald is a working mom and entrepreneur. She has been in the corporate world for 12 years and is also a small business owner.

She has figured out the key to keeping those clients she worked so hard to attain coming back for more and she wants to help you achieve those same results.

Being a busy working mom and entrepreneur, Jen had to carve out time for her business and not having systems in place was becoming overwhelming. When she first created www.theclientangel.com it was mainly for her own organization and a way to keep up with her clients. She needed a way to keep track of all their lives that was less cluttered than the paper system she was using. It created a more personal approach in her business and her customers loved her for it.

When her friends saw this system, they had to have access to it to and so The Client Angel was born!!

Jen is passionate about helping other women and small business owners achieve the client satisfaction she has with a personal touch.

 

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