Following up will help you book the client

Following up is an essential part of the pitching process—especially if your preferred approach starts with online communication, like a cold email or social media outreach.

There are many reasons that you don’t hear back from someone after a pitch, even after a largely positive, in-person meeting. This can be because:

• They forgot to reply.

• Their higher-ups are taking a while to sign off or decide which direction to go in.

• They’re receiving more pitches/emails than they have time to deal with.

• Your email got lost in their inbox.

• They’re out of office.

So if you have the mindset that following up is aggressive and impolite, reframe how you think about it. It’s a normal, and important part of the pitching process.

Following up isn’t rude, it’s normal and necessary

So just because they aren’t getting back to you, doesn’t mean they didn’t like your pitch. A quick and polite email will do the trick, but it’ll take more than one sometimes.

Here is a three-stage process that has been proven to work:

1. Send an email to follow up one week after pitching.

2. Send a second email to follow up another week after the first email.

3. Then, if it’s a prospect you’re very keen to work with, send a third email three to six months down the line.

Email templates for follow up

In the follow-up email, it’s helpful to be brief and remind them of the pitch

If you had a call with them:

Hi [their name],

Following up on our call last week. As I mentioned, I believe I would be a strong fit to help you solve [their problem] because I worked with [other company] and helped them to [how you solved the problem and the outcome].

Happy to connect on the phone or via email if that’s easier. 

Let me know!

Best,

[Your name]

[Original Pitch]

Don’t forget to reattach the original pitch. You don’t want them to have to go digging through their inbox to find it.

If your original pitch was via email:

Hi [their name],

Floating my email to the top of your inbox. As I mentioned, I believe I would be a strong fit to help you solve [their problem] because I worked with [other company] and helped them to [how you solved the problem and the outcome].

Happy to connect on the phone or via email if that’s easier. 

Let me know!

Best,

[Your name]

[Original Pitch]

Tracking outreach

Another essential component of pitching is to keep track of who you’ve pitched, when you sent your pitch, and what the result was. We’ve made an outreach tracker you can use in your workbook, but some other places you can create this if you’re not a fan of google sheets are Excel, Asana, Trello, or Notion.

Try and set a schedule for updating this spreadsheet to ensure you never get too far behind. It can be challenging to update it anytime something changes, so Mo has a reminder on his calendar to update the tracker for every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 5 pm.

Recap

• Discovered the importance of following up.

• Worked on a way to track your pitches.