Managing your enquiries and managing your time

You are a business so you need to remember that from now on time is money, do not waste your time chasing an enquiry that isn’t profitable or waste time going backwards and forward with a couple that are not committing to you

You need to take control, have boundaries and be professional but do not spend hours on this enquiry!

At this stage as it is just an enquiry. You can very easily get involved in conversations that are time consuming, never going anywhere and that are not your ideal client, so you need to manage that from the start.

Make sure that you do not have multiple contact avenues open because, you will at some point lose messages, forget where people are, get confused, lose them, lose yourself.

You do not want to be spending time looking for texts, WhatsApp, messenger, or emails to try and find where you last spoke to someone. You should focus on emails to keep it simple

Where will people contact you?

Facebook messenger from your Facebook page, put a message on their telling them that the messenger box is not monitored, and they need to email you. But do not be tempted to go in and answer the message because that will give them permission to continue with that line of contact.

Instagram, ask for email address and tell them you will email them

Text and WhatsApp ask for email address

You need to take control of the process and manage it, if you do not you may find yourself drowning in questions, messages, and calls

You need to be clear about your business from the start and you need to be clear about your process from the start

Start as you mean to go on, keep everything streamlined and have a process, you will be grateful in the future

Where to start?

Firstly, do not panic because you can do this! Regardless of where the enquiry comes from the first thing you need to do is respond.

If it is your ideal client and you want to engage further, you can now send them a pre written email and you should have your own template for this that you can tweak and personalise.

You will benefit from streamlining your business, so it is a good idea to have templates for everything, do not reinvent the wheel, it does not need reinventing for each client.

If it is a budget client, or you are booked, or you are not interested then again you will send back an email but tell them that unfortunately you are not available but wish them well.

Think about you and your business

My business is very relaxed, and my copy is the same, take time to think about your voice across your business, make sure everything is streamlined and cohesive is it speaking to your ideal client?

So, what should this email say

This is your opportunity to grab their interest! They have already reached out to you, so you have shown, said, or done something that has grabbed their interest so do not be afraid to reach out.

They contacted you so they are interested.

You should use this opportunity to tell them a little about you, your service, what makes you different, your minimum spend, your process, and make sure you use this opportunity to sell yourself.

Remember people buy from people.

Do not forget to ask the date and venue if they have not already told you that

You never ever quote without having a chat first    so tell them that and invite them to chat in the first instance, but be aware you will get blanket enquiries so be prepared

 

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