Episode 94:How to follow up with clients after a project
Why follow-up? What outcomes are you looking for? What makes good follow-up? What resources do we recommend? How often should you follow up? What should you say in your follow-up? Who should you be following up with? What’s your next step?
Summary
Nick and Kai walk through how to keep client relationships alive after a project ends. Nick emails every past client every three months with no pitch and no agenda, and treats referrals as the main thing worth looking for. The episode covers tools, cadence, and why a written system is what makes the process actually stick.
Highlights
- Nick emails all past clients every three months with no pitch and no specific agenda. When a client is in Chicago, he includes a Calendly link and suggests coffee or ramen.
- The goal of these check-ins is referrals, not closing a sale. Nick wraps up a catch-up by mentioning he has a slot opening and asking if they know anyone who might be a good fit.
- Nick rotates outreach so he’s contacting new people every week. His assistant and Contactually keep him on pace; he’s also tried a plain Google Sheet with similar results.
- Kai uses PipeDrive for contact management and Boomerang for Gmail to schedule follow-up reminders. Other options mentioned: Contactually and Sandbox Reminders.
- Kai suggests running a monthly webcast as a filter when the contact list outgrows individual coffee dates. People who show up are the ones to prioritize for one-on-one follow-up.
- Both argue the specific tool matters less than having any written system at all. A Google Doc with cadence, email templates, and a checklist is enough to make follow-up repeatable.
- Kai cites Alan Weiss: think of the third or fourth sale first. The client relationship does not end when the project does.
Read the transcript
So when it comes to uh client projects, I’m curious What sort of communication do you maintain with ex-clients, be it a positive resolution, whatever? How do you maintain that conversation or that relationship after the project has ended?
Every three months, I try and email all of my clients and I ask them how they’re doing. And I’m not trying to sell anything. I just want to know how they’re doing. Um and sometimes they reply back with how they’re doing. Sometimes I have to follow up with how I’m doing. And then it makes them feel that they have to reply with how they’re doing. Sometimes I reply with Calendly links so we can get coffee if they happen to live within the city of Chicago. It was so funny. Two or three months ago, I think maybe more recent, I followed up with a client of mine from four years ago. And we went out for coffee, but they like quit their job at the old client and reassembled their team at a new organization. And they invited the whole team along. And then the rest of the team was like, Why are we meeting with Nick D? And they were like, He just does this. He emails me out of the blue and we get coffee and it’s great. And I’m like. And I’m like, yeah, like, we’re eating ramen. Aren’t you happy to see me? This was a really successful project in 2012. And it’s like basic human relationships. Like, you should be getting coffee with lots of people because that’s how you keep apprised of what they’re feeling. And, like. Why else are we alive if not to have like actual community with other people? This got into feelings time, but it’s true. Like you point being, you should be paying attention to your client relationships, right? And I email every three months and I rotate it so I’m emailing new people every week. And my assistant slash contactually keep me on pace to do that and to make sure I’m not falling off the wagon with that.
So, what sort of outcomes do you look for? Is it closing a sale? Is it stimulating a conversation? Is it a meeting, be it remote or face-to-face? How do you judge that your follow-up, let’s say over a six-month period, is successful for your business, is a good way to invest your time?
I’ll tell you, I’m not trying to close the sale because I don’t know if I should try or what kind of sale to close in the first place. Like, I don’t know whether you’re. uninterested in working with me anymore or experiencing a different set of expensive problems that just don’t matter for me. I think the biggest thing I look for out of it is referrals. So especially when I’m talking right now with like e commerce people, I’ll at the end of it be like, well, I have a slot opening up soon, and if you’d like to make any recommendations, I’d be very deeply grateful for it. That’s the kind of thing that I’m usually looking for. Sometimes it’s just I like catching up and talking about how software is terrible. Like or how my job is going. Or you know, it’s I try to have a pretty loose Agenda because the goal is to catch up. So there’s no way to really know, you know?
No, what I’m hearing is exactly like you said, like the goal is to catch up. You’re stimulating a conversation. And there’s so many unknowns. Are they still at the same company? Well, we figure that out when they show up. What expensive problems are they experiencing? What questions do they have? What projects are coming down the pipeline? These are all things that you need to know before you pitch, or before you write a proposal, or before you make any sort of offering. And the best way to do that, the best way to figure these out is to. Contact the past client and see, like, hey, are you still at the same company? How are things going? What sort of stuff are you working on? How can I help you grow? And by stimulating the conversation, inviting them out to coffee, scheduling a catch-up call, scheduling a strategy session, let’s say. You’re able to understand the current state of the company by stimulating this conversation and just catching up with them, having a conversation, and from that determine Oh, they are experiencing a problem I could help them solve, or they’re experiencing a problem, but it’s not one I could help them solve. Let me refer them to someone else, or oh, they can refer me to other people in my target market. That’s wonderful. And it seems like stimulating the conversation leads you to the resolution of these questions.
Yeah, and you know, even if you don’t end up with a referral or new work out of it, like, does everything have to be about that? Like, please, can it not be all about that? Can it just be about keeping the relationship alive and the possibility that in a year maybe something will work out? Like. There is nothing aggressively harmful in having a nice, pleasant conversation with smart people. I hope that’s not a controversial opinion, but I see a lot of people trying to like. Maximize their coffee time and leverage. And I’m like, what are you doing exactly? Like, why, what is the motivation here? You know? Like, I don’t know. It’s weird.
Yeah. No, I hear you on that. No, I’m with you completely on the idea of The value of following up with clients just to stimulate those conversations. I think it’s an incredibly valuable way to get referrals. You did great work with a client. They’re going to know other people who have similar problems. Hey, A plus B equals C. There’s a great way to make a connection here. And on top of that, just deepening your connections with people in the industry and understanding what sort of problems the industry at large is having. It might not be the time for that client to work again with you. But just saying, like, hey, you’re working in this industry day in and day out. What are you seeing? What’s exciting? What conferences are you going to? I mean, they’re all natural, great conversation topics. but they also help you better understand the market you’re working with, your potential future clients, and how they’re engaging with different people online or different resources.
Yeah, what conferences are you going to and what are you reading lately are like good questions to be asking. If you come away with one interesting actionable takeaway that might teach you more about either your market or about their market, like You won, you know, like, and you have to view it that way. It’s not necessarily like trying to get the next sale. It’s making sure that you’re, you know, keeping that relationship alive.
So you mentioned a tool. Tell me more about the tools you use to manage your follow-up process or to remember who to follow up with.
Contactually is basically a like glorified database that hooks into your email client that pings you when you’ve let relationships go cold. That’s the big one. We’ve paused that lately, actually, and we’ve started using a Google Sheet just because we’re kind of curious how that’ll fare. And there hasn’t been much of a difference, but that’s also because it is run by my assistant. who is very good at keeping on me to email people. In the absence of an assistant, see also the Make Money Online episode about how we hired assistants. You can always just use contextually or some sort of robot. Sandbox reminders is a good one.
Boomerang for Gmail is another one. Boomerang is great. I use PipeDrive. It’s a contact relationship management tool. PipeDrive. com. I absolutely love it. Setting future activities like, hey, send Jim an email and follow up or schedule a coffee with Terry and see how he’s doing. I use it to manage my contacts, my prospects, my leads, and people that I want to maintain and stimulate a relationship with.
Yeah, exactly. So those are a few tools that you can potentially use. But other than that, it’s It’s a matter of doing relationships well, right? And not and being pretty open ended about it. Um and if you uh and find yourself like scheduling too many coffee dates, just start being pickier, you know. If people weren’t enthusiastic about hanging out with you or they never bothered rep Applying, you can cut them, you know, it’s fine. You don’t have to go and reach out to them every 10 minutes, like be really annoying. Like, Don’t be annoying. Just be a good person.
This actually hooks nicely into the previous episode talking about getting started with webinars. I think if you start to get to the point where, oh my gosh, I have so many people I need to follow up with, I can’t do it manually anymore, or I can’t have this many coffee dates, there’ll be no time left for me to work. Then it makes sense to start saying, well, let me start hosting a monthly, you know, a monthly show, a monthly webcast, and invite Past clients, invite people I have strong relationships with to attend this as another means to stimulate a conversation and use it almost as a filter. Well, I contacted 100 past people. 30 of them showed up. Those are the 30 I’m going to prioritize getting coffee with since they seem to have the most questions or engagement or interest around this topic.
Yeah, yeah. That’s, you know, it’s a good way to start prospecting too. If you don’t have any clients, you can always just reach out to people that you know and trust or like other colleagues. Like, usually, I mean. If you’re listening to this podcast, you know not to start independently consulting as your first job out of college. So you have professional contacts in some capacity. Those can be old coworkers, managers, whatever have you. Other people you’ve met at meetups, something like that. Hopefully, you’re being enough of a social butterfly. Take advantage of all of that.
Completely agreed. Completely agreed. I mean, really, it comes down to identifying the different places where Past clients, future clients are around, and inserting yourselves into those spaces. And I think, I mean, we started off talking about how to follow up with clients after a project, but I think we could even say Well, how should you be following up with people you’re meeting? How are you following up with your contacts at large? And I think the same playbook and system applies: stimulate those conversations, nurture the relationship, make sure it’s providing value and See where that conversation naturally carries itself to.
Yeah, you need to, you know, do whatever system works for you, but make sure you have a system for it, right? That needs to happen.
And I think you’re absolutely right there. Systematizing it, even if it’s just a Google Doc that says, well, this is the frequency we follow up, this is how we follow up, this is, you know, email one and email two we send to follow up. Just having a simple Google Doc that breaks that down can make it so easy to say, okay, you know, it’s the 10th of the month. I said every 10 days I’m going to follow up with five past clients. What am I supposed to do now? Well, if you’ve already written that out as a system, or if you’ve over time built it as a system, you’re able to follow a standard operating procedure. It becomes so easy to say, okay, time for me to send email number one to here’s my list of clients, here’s my spreadsheet. Let’s grab 10, send it off, and wait for replies to come in. Set a reminder to check back if no reply comes back. But systematizing it is important, and having it in a way where you’re able to review that system, optimize that system, or remind yourself of that system is, I think, equally important. Yeah.
Yeah. And this is, I mean, it’s a lot of overhead to be thinking about in a business because you’re also, you know, fulfilling client work and answering your own email and trying to get to inbox zero, but don’t let it slide, man. This is something if you come out of the woodwork after one year, that’s not so great. Like, it’s easier to do it after three months and just kind of follow up and see if there’s any other way you can help.
Yeah. Yeah. The relationship or the client consultant relationship doesn’t need to end when the project ends. Instead, like we often say on the show, and like Alan Weiss says, You need to be thinking of the third or fourth sale first. So when that project ends, it’s not okay. Right off into the sunset on my horse, see ya. It’s Hey, what do I need to be doing to maintain this relationship over time to lead to that second, that third, or that fourth project, or lead to the referrals for other projects? I think with a minimum of time invested, it becomes easy to follow up with your clients, maintain those relationships, and help take those relationships to the next level.