Follow up, Follow up, Follow up!

So you’ve just gone to your umpteenth networking benefit and you have a pocketful of business cards. Solid gold right? Wrong if you aren’t doing any follow up. You need a strategy to cash in on those little squares of fortune.

If you are under the impression that people will remember you out of all of the other people that they met that night—think again. Unless you were selling gold lined chocolate bars for a quarter, they forgot you just as soon as they moved on to the next guy. Here’s a little secret about networking. By giving you their business card, they just gave you permission to contact them via email. If you feel like being polite (and I suggest politeness) I would send them a nice little letter something along the lines of “It was so nice to meet you. I hope to see you again….” Something interesting. Now you have sent them an email and they have given you permission to email them, it’s time to build your follow up strategy.

This is where you might want to hire a good Virtual Assistant. This is the boring part.

Constant Contact is probably the best email distribution program there is and you can sign up for a free 60 day trial. I suggest you do. Get a good virtual assistant to design a few newsletters and do a little research (pull some articles off the web that are pertinent to your business unless you happen to have a whole lot of your own copy laying around that you want to use) and put together a beautiful, dynamic, exciting newsletter, then mail it out to these people.

Even better tell them that since you met them at Networking Event XYZ you’re offering a 10% discount on your service A or you’re offering a discount if they refer a friend—whatever you feel comfortable with or can afford. They may not all buy everything you have to offer as soon as you do your first mail out—but you will begin to build a steady list that will grow into a passive income that can support you for years to come!

That is how you do follow up!

That is how people will remember you! 

That is how to turn those little paper squares that are just sitting in your desk drawer into gold. Right now—they’re just paper squares!

Maggie Ruch is a Virtual Assistant who offers affordable options for growing businesses. Check out her website at www.assistspeakers.com where you can get her free eBook “5 Tips for Finding the PERFECT Virtual Assistant”.