For the first four years of my business, the Contact Form on my website just sat there, waiting for Mr. or Mrs. Right to come along, share their name and number and push its sad little button.
It’s not that I wasn’t getting business; I definitely was. But it was coming via direct emails or private messages on social media. This typically resulted in a lengthy, days-long game of Email Tag while we went back and forth (and back and forth again) on what services they were interested in, what times we could meet, could we reschedule five times before actually talking, and so on.
(Sound familiar?)
This Groundhog Day effect would continue even after the Discovery Call as I penned email after email with each different client, sending the proposal, contract, and next steps if they signed on with me.
It was fine for a while. Was it annoying? Sure. But I wasn’t in enough “pain” to actually DO anything about it.
THEN something happened.
When I rebranded and launched my new website this past February, I was inundated with client leads.
My untouched little Contact Form went from Drew Barrymore in Never Been Kissed to this …
One single post on my personal Facebook page announcing my new website landed me two new ongoing clients and two one-off projects.
Sharing my brand spankin’ new quiz inside Facebook groups (never in a spammy way, mind you, only on Share threads) generated a flurry of “OMG, I love your website and I want to work with you!” conversations.
At one point, I had 9 leads at ONE time.
I should have been poppin that bubbly I like to talk about so much, right? And I definitely was, don’t get me wrong.
But you know what else I was doing?
- Spending the majority of my work days going back and forth with new leads via email, comparing availability
- Writing the same emails over and over again for each new inquiry
- Writing the same emails over and over again each time I onboarded a new client
I was spending so much time on this process, that I was falling behind on my client deadlines.
For someone with so many new leads, I was super stressed out, overwhelmed and anxious. So I decided to do something about it … and it has made a WORLD of difference in my productivity and stress levels (and bonus, I’m closing more clients).
- I mapped out my entire Client Workflow from inquiry to requesting a testimonial. I literally opened a Google Doc and wrote down step by step, what happens after a potential client send me an inquiry.
- I wrote email templates for every step of the process (Inquiry Response, Sending the Proposal, Requesting a Testimonial, etc.). I actually already kind of had these done. It was just a matter of going back through my emails and Frankensteining together a template that would work for everyone going forward.
- I got a calendar scheduler and hired a Dubsado whiz to set up my workflows and automations, using my brand new emails.
The result has been pure magic. In the next post, I’ll share exactly how this has transformed my Inquiry and Client Communication process from Nightmare on Email Street to You’ve Got The Best Mail Ever. Stay tuned!
Erika
P.S. Good news: You don’t need to spend an entire day creating your own email templates from scratch, because I’ve already done it for you. Inside my Top-Shelf Client Experience email template bundle, you’ll find 13 fill-in-the-blank email responses and templates with guidance on how to make them your own (the same emails I use daily in my own 6-figure business to keep clients raving and make sure they tell all their friends about me).
