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Podcast Transcript:

Hi, everybody, I am back with a teabreak episode. I know recently we’ve had a lot of guests on, partly because the topics were too juicy that I couldn’t say no. And I really wanted to jump into them. And partly because things have been quite busy behind the scenes. And these are kind of the ideal things to put out there, whilst I’m doing those bits and pieces.

I say, I, I actually mean, me and my team. I have a wonderful admin team, now who are helping a lot more with the podcast and some of the social media bits and bits behind the scenes. So, it’s all very exciting. I’m still working with Jo, who I’ve worked with for years as well. And she’s helping a lot more with helping us move over from Teachable to Podia with all my courses. So, if you have had one of my courses before, you’ll be receiving details very soon all about that.

But I want to jump on and do a quick solo episode, we do have a couple more interview ones coming up. But then I want to get back into a lot more of these sorts of teabreak short and sweet podcasts.

This week, though, I wanted to touch on following up. Now I know at the moment, things are a little bit more challenging for freelancers, because of the cost of living and lots of things happening at the moment. I know a lot of people are finding it a little bit more challenging than usual to find clients. And this does depend on the industry. I know, in say for example, the copywriting industry, there’s a bit more of a challenge because of AI. That said, I think that initial excitement is dying down. And people are realising that while AI can be really useful for a lot of things, there are certain things that it can’t do. And it’s things like warmth, and content that really, really connects to the people that are reading it. And it’s just it’s not the same. So hopefully, copywriting industry and other industries affected by AI. We’ll be seeing a return a little bit soon to the workload. But I wanted to touch on following up. Because I think more now than ever, we need to be plugging all those gaps and making sure that we are following up with people. And I wanted to share three times to do that.

So, the first one is if you send a pitch to somebody, people can sometimes feel a bit awkward about following up, like they’re chasing. But equally, lots and lots of people, myself included, are absolutely terrible with email, and need that nudge, they need that push they need to be reminded. Now, I am talking here about pitches where they have asked for a pitch. I’m not talking about if you are sending a cold pitch, and then badgering that person three or four times a week. That’s annoying. I have a quite a lot for various different things with my business, and it is annoying. But if they’ve invited a pitch, checking in two or three times afterwards, just to see if they need any more information, or that kind of thing can be really, really helpful. The third one that you might want to send would be something along the lines of I’m going to assume that having not heard back from you that you’ve decided to go in a different direction or a different project. I wish you all the luck in the future, let me know if there’s something I can help with. This was something Sally Farrant shared with me in my freelance business lounge a few years ago, and it’s so good, because when you send it, if they’re not interested, they won’t reply, fine. But most of the time, they’ll go, oh, gosh, I’m so sorry, I want to come back to you, life’s got in the way, or whatever has happened, I really do still want to be booking in with you or I want to discuss something else. So, it’s a really good way of ending the chasing or just reigniting a little bit. So, I have shared some templates for that in my tricky client conversations bundle. So that’s going to be on Podia. It is already on Podia, actually, so I’ll put the link for that in the notes.

So, the second way is with email opens, and I saw this done really well recently. I had an email from through from someone about a networking event. I had clicked through, and then I forgotten to buy it. Basically, I got distracted by another notification on my phone, I think. She messaged me on Facebook, a couple of days later. Now, we already connected, so it wasn’t completely out of the blue and cold. We are sort of already friends through Facebook. So, it was a bit more of a kind of a warm follow up. But she just messaged and said, Are you interested in doing it? Just to let you know the price goes up on Sunday. Let me know if you got any questions. It didn’t feel pushy. It just felt like ‘oh, I’ve seen you’ve shown him some interest. I just wanted to check in.’ If I wasn’t interested, I would have said no, I can’t make it or not this time, but thank you. But this actually gave me the nudge I needed to buy that ticket. So, it worked really well, and I’ve had a couple of other instances recently where people who I’ve already developed a relationship with, whether it’s following each other Instagram or whatever like that. They followed up once I’ve clicked through on a link from a newsletter. Now, you may also get some people who don’t like this. But I would say the success rate is probably going to be higher than the ones that you’re going to irritate. And I think actually, most people understand its business. And I think if the tone is right, and it’s very friendly, and informal and relaxed, most people are fine about it.

And then finally, don’t forget to follow up with your old clients, if you haven’t worked with them in a while, check in with them, see how they’re doing. See if they have any work coming up, or if you can help them with. You’ll probably find that they’ve had something on their to do list that meant to be following up with or reaching out to a freelancer to do and then you land in their lap and say, ‘Hi, remember me, we work together really well. How about we do that again?’ That saves them so much time.

So, just to summarise, the three things are ‘follow up with your pitches’, ‘follow up with your email opens’. And actually, I should have mentioned, this is the ones where if they’re getting your newsletter, you can see what links people have clicked on. But also, if you use like, mixmax.com, which is a plugin for Gmail, you can track emails and clicks through that as well. But yeah, I was mainly thinking about newsletters here and things like that. And then with ‘old clients as well’. So, I’d love to know if you do this if you follow up with someone who you may not have been feeling confident about doing before, and how that turned up.

So, you’ve got a couple more interview podcasts to come. And then I’m going to be back into doing lots of these mini ones. So, if there’s anything you want me to talk about, do let me know. All my contact details are in comments below. I’d love to answer some questions and things like that. So, do send them over. And hopefully have a wonderful week.

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