Whether you’re a holistic health practitioner or other service provider that has been seeing clients for at least a little while, there is a potential treasure trove of new business for you.
Yes, I’m talking about former clients. Clients whom you’ve helped who have completed and moved on.
Pretty sweet. They’ve already worked with you, they already like you. Certainly some of them would come back for more.
Yet the task of going back and asking them to return is not so easy, evidently.
I was talking to a client about this issue, and it became clear how “icky” she felt about it by the way she procrastinated reaching out to her past clients.
I totally understand why it feels icky, so let me explain the non-icky way to reach out. But first, what’s really going on? Why should it feel icky in the first place?
Why the Ick?
One of the principles of our Sacred Selling approach is that you aren’t trying to sell to people, you’re merely discovering whether they should be working with you or not.
In the case of a new potential client, you want to spend most of your time asking questions to find out if you can help them. Really, the sales conversation is a compassionate assessment, not a manhunt.
When you discover that yes, someone should work with you, and they agree, it’s wonderful. You do the work, they get the help, eventually you come to completion and off they go, smiling big smiles.
When you reach out to someone whom you haven’t worked with in six months or a year here’s the truth: you no longer know if they need what you offer. You aren’t back at square one because of the shared history, but you certainly don’t know if it’s appropriate for them to get any help from you.
Because you don’t know, of course it feels icky to invite them to get a session. When you don’t know what’s going on with them, no matter how good your intentions, any invitation you extend can’t help but become about you getting a client, instead of being in service to them.
That’s the icky feeling: that you are using a shared history to try to get another client. Don’t push past the icky feeling, your heart is giving you good feedback!
Here’s What To Do Instead
Rather than just inviting them back, willy-nilly, instead reach out with a check-in and offer a self-assessment. And when I say a check-in, I don’t mean a vague, “Uh, it’s been awhile and I’m just checking in…”
As a professional who has helped them, it’s certainly appropriate for you to check-in to see how it’s going for them. Have the results they received stuck? Have new problems cropped up? Here’s a sample email or phone call:
“Hi, Josephine, it’s been six months since we last worked together! I know, I can’t believe how time flies either!
“I’m writing [or calling] to check in. You had a really big issue that we worked with, and you made some huge progress. I wanted to make sure that things were still going well.
“Because, as we talked about when we worked together, problems can creep in slowly, almost unnoticeably, I wanted to offer you a quick self-assessment. Can you do me a favor and take a minute now, click reply, and answer these two questions for me?
“And please, give me an update on your life. I’d love to hear how things are going generally!”
After You Hear Back
Options are either they are doing fine, or they are facing some kind of challenges or returning symptoms.
If they aren’t doing fine, recommend they come in for a tune-up session. That tune-up session can then go more in-depth into their situation. They might be fine with just the tune-up session, but chances are some of your past clients will need more than that.
If they are doing fine, write back and celebrate, and ask if you can interview them for ten minutes on the phone to get feedback on the lasting results of the work. If they say fantastic things in that interview, then get their permission to use what they said as a testimonial. And ask if they know anyone who should be working with you.
Here’s a key take-away: whenever you face something in your business that feels “ick,” please don’t push past the ick, telling yourself you need to get over it. Instead, take the time to look and see what your heart is telling you. You can almost always find a non-icky way of accomplishing what you want to do.
In particular, with this two-step reach-out process to former clients, you either end up with some booked sessions, or a new testimonial to help encourage a new client to come in, and even perhaps a referral. What’s more, if you create a system where you are actively reaching out in this way to every former client six months after they complete… well, I’m just curious how this could accelerate your business.
Have you done this? Do you do anything to reach out to former clients? Let’s discuss!
Peace,
Mark
32 Responses
Mark, I read this one avidly because circling back to clients in a systematic way is still in development for me and kinda difficult, it feels so scary to do that, which makes me so grateful that you lay out a system and structure for this. You suggest asking the old client to answer two questions. Are these the ones you mean— “Have the results they received stuck? Have new problems cropped up?”
Thanks so much!
Love and light,
Sue
Hi Sue- so glad it was helpful! The two questions are going to vary according to what your business is, so they should be more specific to your particular work, but yes, those are the general areas of the questions to ask.
What an awesome article, Mark. Thank you sooo much!!! I just wrote to my email list in a new way, I love the way you ask in your emails to hit reply. I never thought to do that, but I love that it implies that you are interested, and its personal and individual. I was sorta scared to hear what they might say. 🙂
I ask how people are getting on, but accept what they tell me or if they dont want to tell me. So often I’m left not really knowing. Also asking means they have to assess what did work for them and why and how.
Kate- yes! So glad to hear how helpful it was- and to write to your list in a new way, that’s wonderful! The emails I detail in this post are meant to be personal and individual, so the “hit reply” thing is very real.
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