“Hey! It’s Me Again…” A Lesson in the Power of Following Up By Jason Roberts

The other day I was talking to a good friend of mine about the changing market and what strategies he found worked best.

We were sharing our various tweaks we had made to our own marketing plans and how successful they were or were not. It’s a conversation we often have.

But what struck me this time, and I am not sure why it hasn’t struck me before, was that the one strategy we always put in the success column is Follow Up. Consistently following up with a lead always works!

If One is Good, More is Better

I have always been a person who thinks in terms of if one is good, more must be better.

I figure that if I send one letter, 10 would better.  If I make 1 phone call, 6 would be even better. If I sent 1 email, 100 would be better! Okay that may be pushing it, but you get the gist. Sending just one piece of marketing is good but more is better! I think that is why the idea of Follow Up has been something I have always used.

When I explain this strategies benefits to my coaching students, I always use the example of shopping in a store at the mall.  If you are like me, you walk into the store with a single purpose…to get the item you are looking for as quickly as possible and get the heck out of there! But if you are also like me, the store is a foreign place where you have no idea where the one thing you need is located.

So inevitably you walk around the store searching.  Eventually a friendly employee walks up and says, “Hi! Can I help you find anything?” And what do you say? Be honest! You say, “No thank you. I am just looking.” Then you scream in your head for the next five minutes as you continue to search, “Why didn’t I ask them where it was?!!!!!!!” Eventually, said employee takes pity on you again and asks if they can help and you graciously accept. I can see you all cringing, thinking about how many times you have done this.

But why do we do this?

Why do we refuse help when we know that we need it?

Because we are trained to give a no answer when offered help. So, what do you think most people’s response is going to be when they see your letter, email, postcard, message offering them help?

Just Wanted to Check in Again

If you stopped at one contact, sellers are going to do what people do, which is not respond.

Now in my example above, it usually only takes one more time for me to finally accept total defeat and let them help me, but other people’s thresholds are different. Sometimes it takes 2 times, 3 times, even 20 times of following up with that one person to get a yes. But how do you get to that yes until you go through all the noes?

Back to my conversation I had with my friend the other day.

When we got to the part again about how follow up was his most successful strategy, he told about this deal he just closed.  He was saying how he had first called this guy about his house a year ago. That day, they walked the property and discussed some numbers, but the guy was meeting with some other investors and agents and wanted to see what they had to offer. My friend said that he must have, “talked to that guy every month over the last year. I thought he was never going to accept, but I just closed that deal and made a 22K wholesale fee off of it.” Just a once a month phone call led to a 22k paycheck.

Not to bad for just “checking in again”.