Getting Old Leads Back In The Door

Oprah said, “Cheers to another new year and a chance for us to get it right.”

This year is about getting our follow up right.

Every year, I send a variation of this email to leads who didn’t buy or important people who didn’t connect with me last year.

“Hey (first name),

Happy New Year!

Hope you had a great break. I managed to get some sun in Central this year.

And got this cheesy photo with one of my best mates and Santa.

Hopefully, the break was as good to you as it was to me.

I know we didn’t get a chance to chat last year, but I’d love to jump on and see what plans you’ve got for the upcoming year.

Do you have a slot for a chat this week or the one after?

No stress if not.

Here is what you might expect to get back.

Most of the time when I’ve asked clients why they didn’t buy it came down to timing.

Which is why you need to follow up.

This blog I found to back up my anecdotal experience says that 44% of salespeople give up after their first contact, and 98% of sales happen through follow-up.

This email is just a quick personal experience shared with a prospect that:

1. Shows you are a human

2. Is a soft touch point to engage people after they’ve had a long break

Most of us take a long time to decide on things which is why we have marketing to keep nudging people along the path to buying.

In this case, this email serves as a quick reminder to do just that.

Notes: Send this on the Tuesday of the first week where most people have returned to work. In New Zealand, that is the 15th of January but you get the gist.

The most important line in the email that I shared is this one.

Do you have a slot for a chat this week or the one after?

This is a dichotomous question and it only gives the person two ways to answer. They can only reply with this week or next week.

Let me know if you use it.

The Good Enough Problem

Warren Buffett jokes about his airline addiction - he says he needs an airline's anonymous hotline to call every time he thinks about buying an airline. (they're terrible investments).

I get a similar urge. Every time my calendar opens up, I can't help adding something new.

For example, this past year, I was "The CFO" of Rugby Bricks, running a gym, writing this newsletter, starting a new business and consulting/advising at the same time as learning guitar, jiu-jitsu, and dabbling in physics.

It's dumb. I spread my time and attention so thin that I didn't do anything well.

Shaan Puri, the wise-yogi half of the my first million podcast, calls this small boy stuff. Driven by greed and insecurity, you want everything and end up with little of anything.

Shaan knows this curse well; he's struggled with it for years but is using the experience of two of his mates to cure himself.

One of his friends is in an okay relationship. He knows it's not the one, yet he stays in it while waiting for something better to come along.

The other is in a job that's just 'meh' but doesn't think he'll leave it until something better comes.

This, as Shaan calls it, is the good enough problem.

We tend to end up in jobs, relationships, routines and whatever else that's good enough. Not bad enough to leave but never enough to be truly fulfilling.

Impulsively filling my calendar with projects, meetings and otherwise has led me to the unpromising good enough land. Leaving me no room to experience what Direck Sivers calls "hell yeahs".

And so my resolution this year is: less good enoughs and more hell yeahs.

That starts with this newsletter.

For the past two years, I've tried to write this thing in one voice, one point of view, and one cohesive thought under the pseudonym of The Method. But there are two of us (Kale and me).

And as much as I enjoy Kale's insights, I don't enjoy rewriting them for him here. I'd rather just write my own.

So moving forward, I'll be sharing my thoughts and experiences from my perspective, and Kale will do the same from his.

I don't know how this will affect your reading experience; two voices and opinions might come off a little janky. But what I do know is the way I've been writing this thing has been good enough for me for too long.