Follow-ups on Upwork and Linkedin. What to write and how many times?

People who have answered me don't answer again. My lost reason is "poor communication" or "no answer". Sounds familiar?

Maybe 9 years ago, I read a very useful article on the HubSpot platform that we are losing 40% of clients in case we are not doing at least 4 follow-ups. After that, I read many sales books and applied all the information to create my own follow-up system.

If you are Ukrainian, also check my podcast with Den about automation on Upwork where Den is telling how to follow-up with clients automatically, especially after Gigradar tons of replies that are hard to handle.

In this article:

1. The importance of the next step
2. My follow-up scheme
3. LinkedIn exceptions

The importance of the "next step"

Most of the agencies I've seen were showing me their messages and chats with clients without any sign of the next step. What is the next step? It's simply when you are saying what you expect from the lead next or what you are going to do next. For example, here is the dialogue:

-What is the cost?

-The cost is $56789 and it will take 1789 hours.

That's it. Then most people say that the lead didn't answer. Because YOU THINK he should answer right away. But people are different. Maybe he decided he will ask other candidates or he will ask his boss or it's time to sleep or he simply missed the message.

What would be the right way to talk? To say, "The cost is $56789 and it will take 1789 hours. What is your budget?" or "When could I get an answer from you?" or "Next step is your review of my estimation doc and your questions and then we will answer everything till the end of this week."

Whenever you are selling, you need to take your client gently through the whole sales process yourself. You shouldn't expect he should know how this process should look like. Every time ask an open question and add expected deadlines. If a client wants to delay, always ask for the date.

My follow-up scheme

One of my clients has called my scheme a "follow-up machine". I don't mind.

Just to explain my humor - here is a YouTube video (you can skip)

My scheme is the following:

• 1 follow-up - just a simple reminder of yourself the next day after you think the lead should answer you. Only in case you gave him a next step. If not - give!

• 2nd follow-up - in 2 days after the first follow-up. It has a trick. You need to pretend you already started working on his project by asking questions or showing wireframes. You don't need to start really, just pretend. For example: "We started discussing your app architecture with our CTO and got a few questions: ..."

• 3rd follow-up is my favorite one: in a week write some useful information without asking for anything else. For example, share an important event that may be useful for your lead or share any important info about software updates and don't ask about anything instead. It's like a gift. This follow-up type is called "useful" and it should be useful for your potential client. Most leads are answering at least a thank you note. That's how you can use it to continue the chat.

• 4th follow-up - in a week. Quite direct but still polite. Did you decide to move forward? Should I book resources for you for the next month? Something like that.

• 5th - in a week. Break-up letter. A break-up letter is a powerful tool itself. You can read many things about it on the internet yourself, however the most important is the start. Something like: "I am not going to follow you up anymore...". The importance of this tool is another trick - people don't like to lose even the thing they didn't want to have.

I think 5 follow-ups and 1 month of keeping the lead alive are enough for Upwork as Upwork is a hot leads platform.

LinkedIn exceptions

When I was a young sales manager, I had training on LinkedIn and email sales in the American company called NorthStar. I got impressive results after that. However, after getting leads, I was following the same scheme that was working for me on Upwork. And it was not working well.

Recently I learned myself that LinkedIn is a very cold and slow strategy tool. You need at least 12 follow-ups there and those ones could be different and working through 6-12 months before you get a call.

The team I am consulting has shown me a tool they use and I was impressed by their LinkedIn follow-ups. What did I learn? You should be ready to check your client's profile and follow them up according to your chat history. You need to do it on LinkedIn millions of times. We got a very slow but also impressive result by learning the follow-up rules here. It was my first test of the tool. Maybe I'll have more info later.

Thanks for reading!

Tamara