Focus on the “low-hanging fruit”

Most people don’t follow up on prospects because of the following reasons:

• They’re afraid of appearing too pushy

• They’re afraid of being turned down or rejected

• Their negative self-talk (that gremlin) gets in the way

• They’re afraid to have to talk about money (dreaded subject)

• They have a fear of success

• And simultaneously, a fear of failure too

Problem is, following up on leads is often 90% of the game. You spend all this time networking, marketing yourself, making calls, looking for the right client, but what’s it worth if you don’t follow up on the leads you DO have?

This is a major obstacle for many of my clients and a shift gets created when I share the Low-Hanging List with them.

If you think about low-hanging fruit on a tree, it’s usually the fruit that is the ripest and therefore the lowest and most accessible on the tree as it is the heaviest. But mostly, I use this analogy to show you that low-hanging fruit is the easiest to pick. You don’t have to tug at it to get it off the stem or branch. And when you think about warm prospects in terms of how ready they are to work with you (cold, warm and hot – hot being they’re already signing on the dotted line) you can easily equate the “warm” prospects as being similar to the low-hanging fruit.

Warm prospects are people who’ve expressed interest in working with you, in one form or another, over the past year or more. This could have been either in passing (“Oh, I should work with you one day” to “I want to work with you, but I’m not quite ready yet”) or with more intention (“Let’s set up a time to talk about working together”) via e-mail, verbally or third party referral.

Go through your mental Rolodex, sticky notes on your desk, day planner and past potential-client folder to see who in your network has expressed interest in working with you over the last 6 months to a year and more. It’s usually many more than you immediately think of, especially if you’ve been in business for awhile but have no tracking system for warm prospects.

Then it’s time to follow up with these people with the objective of setting up a conversation about working together. (We’ll discuss this further in the following step.) You can also use this list to send invitations to your upcoming events, to send articles on relevant topics, invite to a golf outing, etc.

The bottom line is, when I use my Low-Hanging Fruit list, I sign on a lot more clients than when I don’t use it. And many of my clients have said the same thing when they’ve used it religiously.

Your Client Attraction Assignment:

Have a chart on your desk with several columns: 1) name, 2) phone number, 3) e-mail address, 4) referral source, 5) that client’s particular concern and 6) status/when to contact next.

Please list all of these “low-hanging fruit” on the chart. This can also include those you met with previously but who never signed up, for whatever reason. Fill it out in pencil and keep it on your desk at ALL times.

This will be one of your more important documents to use for signing on new clients.

It’s about prioritizing and focusing on the “low-hanging fruit” rather than starting the process from scratch with cold prospects who’ve never heard of you before. It’s somewhat deceptive because it’s so simple, but the good things usually are…

Leave this sheet on your desk at all times. It’s the only paper on my desk and, yes, I do use pencil when I fill it out, as things change constantly and having it hidden in my laptop’s hard drive would take it out of my sight.

And you know what they say, out of sight, out of mind…

Now, if you’re just starting out and trying to fill your practice in the FIRST place, then follow a step-by-step system that feels easy and authentic to you. The Client Attraction Home Study System™ gives you the most important things to do to set up simple, solid systems, so that you consistently fill your pipeline and continually get new clients. It’s all step-by-step, not a big mishmash of things. So, you do step one of the system, and when you’re done with that, you move on to step two, and so on. All the tools, scripts, templates, and examples are handed to you on a silver platter. Easy. You can get it at TheClientAttractionSystem.com.