The Follow-Up You're Avoiding on Purpose

Previously in the Live Local Blog: I told you about the strategy to stop following up empty-handed, and I showed you three things you can send that take five minutes and ask for nothing. And if you've been doing this a while, none of that was new to you because you know how to give first. You know the mechanics.

So today I'm not giving you another tactic; instead, I'm giving you the assignment nobody hands out.

Go back to the people you already lost and have forgotten about.

We all have them, you know, the contacts you reached out to once, the wrong way and never heard back from again. The "just checking in" you fired off a year ago that got no reply, so you never tried again. The past client you meant to stay close to and let go quiet because it started to feel awkward. The contact you asked for a referral before you'd ever given them a single thing, felt the silence, and quietly wrote them off.

You didn't lose those people because they don't like you; you lost them because your only touch was a withdrawal, and when it didn't pay off, so you stopped. That's not their verdict on you, that was just your system before we aligned it and made it effective. 

Here's the uncomfortable truth, you'd rather start fresh with new contacts than reopen an old thread you handled badly. New feels clean and going back feels like admitting you dropped it. So you keep prospecting for strangers while a list of people who already know your name sits there, cold, because facing them costs more than meeting someone new.

That's the accountability gap and now that you have the information, what you don't have is the willingness to walk back into a room you left on a bad note. Until today.

So pick one. One person you went silent on. Don't apologize, don't explain, don't reference the gap, just show up with something for them. A name, an article, a piece of recognition, NO ASK. Reopen the account with a deposit, the way you should have the first time.

Most of you won't. You'll read this, agree with it, and go back to prospecting strangers on Monday, because the strangers don't remind you of the ones you dropped.

If that's you, and you know it's you, that's exactly the conversation worth having. I do a free 15-minute marketing analysis and it's built for people who have the knowledge and aren't acting on it. You can book it here: https://calendly.com/livelocalteam/15-minute-marketing-analysis

Who's the one person you went quiet on that you already know you should reopen?