If you’re a bookkeeper and you need business, you have to pursue it. You can’t just wait for it to come to you. It may be out of your comfort zone because you’re not used to asking for what you need but it doesn’t need to be difficult to market your freelance bookkeeping business.
It can be a huge effort for bookkeepers to attend networking events. If you’ve put the effort in to go to the event make sure you follow-up for the best results – if not you could be wasting your valuable time.
Here are some suggestions on how to follow-up on your networking and get the best results:
• Be Alert to Collect Contact Information
When you attend a networking event, collect business cards from people you’d like to follow-up on, including colleagues you want to partner with and prospective clients. Even if you know them, get their cards since their contact information may have changed.
• Schedule Your Follow-Ups
Find a program that works for your freelance bookkeeping business, an Excel worksheet, Outlook, or sales lead software to record the contact information – the name, the date, what you talked about, and what you want to talk about in the future.
When you plan to attend a networking event, block out 30 minutes of the very next day to send a follow-up email or handwritten note to all the people you’d like to connect with as future clients or partners. Keep it simple by saying something like, “It was great to meet you and I’d love to talk with you some more. I’ll call in a couple of days…”
• Don’t Procrastinate
I can’t emphasize enough the need to have in place a system to record and schedule your follow-ups within one or two days. But, if something prevents you from getting it done, you should still contact them. If you’re emailing them just put in the header, “We met at such and such event.”
• Don’t Take It Personally
If you’ve reached out to someone and they haven’t responded, you need to try a second time if you really want to connect with that person. Any number of things could have happened to your original message. A telephone call would be the next step. You could say, “Hey, it was great meeting you, I really enjoyed learning about your business, would love to stay in touch, let’s set up a time to have coffee.”
If they don’t respond to you after a couple of tries, let it go. You’re not trying to chase somebody who’s not interested speaking to you.
If you’re consistent with your follow-up you will make valuable connections and, believe it or not, marketing your freelance bookkeeping business will become ALMOST effortless. If you’d like more strategies on how to kick your marketing into high gear, check out my brand new marketing for bookkeepers program.
