Welcome back to the Boss Responses podcast.

We are on day three with our guest co-host, Leslie Lang. Today we're talking about when you should follow up after you first reached out to a potential new client. This is one of those questions I see a lot and I see a lot of great answers on this one. Jennifer Goforth G regory's blog and Ed Gandia, has talked about this on his podcast, so check both of those out as well. But today Leslie and I are going to give you our take on the situation. Let's go ahead and jump into today's question.

If you're a freelancer, business owner or anyone who deals with clients, you're in the right place. I'm your host, teresa Edmond. I've been dealing with clients and running my business for nearly two decades and in that time I've dealt with my share of doubt, imposter syndrome and not knowing what to say when a client asks a question. I wasn't ready for. I created this podcast to empower you with the boss responses you need to grow your business.

Each week, my guest co-host and I will bring you five episodes packed with practical insights. Monday through Thursday, we answer your questions, and Fridays we dive deep to explore how our co-host embraced their role as the boss of their business. Welcome to Boss Responses. We're back for day three with Leslie and Leslie, I have a question for you today. This is from a reader about queries and letters of introduction and I don't do a lot of those, so I'm hoping you can answer this question. It says I send a lot of queries or letters of introduction and I find that most of the time I get assignments because I follow up, not from that first contact. What's your take on this and how important is the follow up?

That is such a great question. I actually find the same thing I went. A lot of my work at this point is from referrals or it's ongoing work with companies I've worked with for a long time. But when it gets a little slower, I go back to the basics and that's sending out LOIs, letters of introduction, and I find the same thing.

Very, very often I don't hear anything back and I think a lot of people think, oh, that doesn't work, then why bother? But then always follow up and I often get interest and work after one or even two follow ups and I don't understand why, but I've just come to accept that now is that's the way it works. So I shoot out the first ones, I put a note in my calendar for maybe a week later and if I haven't heard anything back, what I do is I hit forward on that first email that I sent out and I write I'm just following up to make sure you received my email below, let me know if there's any freelance writing I can help you with, or something like that, and that is the one, and then, if I don't hear, I might do it again a month later or then a couple months later. I just keep going till the cows come home. I never stop and it works.

I don't know why it works.

It works though.

Do you think it's a matter of just being there hitting their inbox at the right time? And they've already seen your name, so they're familiar with it?

I think that's probably part of it. I think some of it is just as basic, as people are busy and they may be glanced at your first email and then it got buried. You know, I mean that happens to all of us, and so they feel a little guiltier after they see it two or three times and haven't responded to you. Or maybe they were interested and meant to respond to you, but I think that's so important. If there's only one or two things you could teach a new freelance writer, it would be to keep following up, and that's when you hear back from people.

Well, and yeah, not only with queries and letters of introduction, but with your clients. If you send them an email and they don't respond back, they get busy. People are busy. Don't assume they're ignoring you. Don't assume they're not interested. Send a follow up. If I do a query or a letter of introduction, I have a stopping point. I will send that first one and then I follow up about a week later, like you do, and then I'll follow up two weeks after that and then a month after that, and that one is usually my final one. And I send something funny. I send a.

There's an old sales trick where you send an email that has three options. I haven't heard back from you. I'm going to assume it's one of these three things, and one of them is just completely outlandish A dragon ate your computer, something like that. And then it's so funny, you've gotten busy and you haven't had a chance to respond yet. You're really not interested and that's totally okay. You put something like it in there. Or three a dragon ate your computer and you couldn't follow up. Whichever option it is, I just wanted to let you know this is the last time you'll hear from me and I've had a response to almost every single one of those, even if it was just, you're right, I was busy or no, we don't have any work right now, but do check back in six months and at least that keeps that relationship open. I love that response.

That's great. Yeah, that's great. I will. If I don't hear after the first two or three contacts, I will maybe go back after six months or something, because everything has changed by then and they're not gonna be remembered that I wrote before and they've got new projects and so anyway, yeah, I think following up is so important. I highly highly recommend you have to do that to succeed in this business.

One tip I would also give is, if you're following up with someone or a company and you haven't followed up with them in like six months, check to make sure it's still the same person, because with all of the staffing changes, it's possibility that the person you're emailing is no longer even there and someone just never reads their inbox anymore. So double check and make sure that you're emailing the right person.

Yeah, LinkedIn, check them on LinkedIn, I agree.

LinkedIn's great. All right, thank you, and we will be back for day four with Leslie tomorrow.