Let’s role-play a moment, shall we?
Let’s say a prospective fills out your application, schedules an intake call with you, and then says something to the effect that they’ll follow up later, they can’t afford it now, they need to think about it, etc.
What do you do right now?
If you’re like many service providers, at best maybe you market to that person a few times more before calling them a loss. If you’re an attorney and that prospect paid you, then you might save that person’s contact info so you can “conflict them out” in the future. If not, you’ll likely just keep their info in case they contact you in the future.
Either way, you hope that the person comes back…
Only to find out they engaged your competitor instead.
If this is how your firm runs, then you have what I call The Reactivity Problem.
The Reactivity Problem
Many professional service providers are still running under an old-school, reactive model. And who can blame them? In this model, the professional services firm relies mostly on the digital equivalent of turning on your “open for business” light in your shop window, hoping that whoever needs you will walk in the door.
This model worked in the pre-internet days to grow a business — back when people still relied on Yellow Pages and community affinity to purchase professional services. But times have changed, and it doesn’t work now when competition is plenty yet attention so scarce.
How People Find You Now
Nowadays, your consumer base isn’t finding you necessarily from a professional services site or even from a Google search: they’re searching on social media (TikTok, YouTube, Facebook), they’re searching on ChatGPT and other AI tools. They might be asking their friends who they know, but even those friends will rely on some extent on the ads and listings they see online.
And if what they find is:
- Non-existent social profiles or worse: dead social media profiles
- Old website design or worse: outdated content
- A contact form or worse: asking them to call you
Then you jmight as well be screaming: WE’RE CLOSED FOR BUSINESS!
If you can’t take the time to prioritize your marketing, then how can you be trusted to prioritize your client’s needs?
Herein lies the new paradigm of marketing: the Trust Economy.
You must not do so little marketing that people don’t trust you, but not so much of the wrong kind that you appear scammy.
The Alternative: The Trust Economy
Attention is a precious economy, and people only have so much space in their mind for new information. Byron Sharp, in his book, How Brands Grow: What Marketers Don’t Know, explores the concept of “mental availability,” which involves ensuring your brand is the first one people recall when they’re ready to buy. How you do that is what marketing is for, especially in the services industry where you can’t always manufacture demand (think family law, public adjusting, etc).
But more than taking up space in your prospect’s mind, in this paradigm, your marketing should also engage in the Trust Economy.
Nowadays, it’s relatively easy for anyone to put up a social media profile, a website, and basic marketing — and end up scamming well-meaning people. Just look at (xyz person who takes down job scammers every day who do this at scale) and swindle intelligent professionals who usually know better. The cons are getting more sophisticated, and the tricks of the trade are becoming more well-known.
But what this also means is that if you aren’t engaging in any kind of marketing, such as publishing regularly on your socials; publishing blog content on your website; keeping your website up-to-date with events, webinars, latest awards, testimonials; and otherwise showing that you exist…
Then you might as well not exist in the mind of your consumer.
Modern clients won’t call you to ask if you’re still in business. They’ll simply assume that if you don’t have an up-to-date website or social media presence that you simply aren’t. Or that if you are, they’ll get poor service because if you can’t be boethered to market yourself… are you really going to be bothered to do a great job for them?
Your marketing exists to prove that you exist as much as it serves to attract your ideal clients. To only think of marketing as making money misses the point.
Which brings me back to the problem of not following up when someone reaches out:
If you have a sales process right now which does not actively engage your prospects and nurture them until they are ready to use your services, then you are at best wasting your time (and theirs) and at worst doing marketing for your competitors.
Here’s what to do instead:
- Have a system for following up immediately after the sales call. You can’t wait for this to be left to chance. You need to have a plan and make sure that you have the team and tech to make it happen.
- Make sure that system includes personalized and REAL sales outreaches as well as automated and long-term nurturing. Just sending an AI follow-up is not enough. To stand out as an Expert who gives a damn, you need to actually make it human. Send a letter, leave a voicemail, do something that’s real. And then make sure that this person also gets long-term marketing via your email newsletter, print newsletter, postcards, or something else so that even if they don’t hire you… they’ll likely refer you to their peers or friends.
Want some help with developing Sales Empowerment Campaigns for your Expert Brand? Contact me and let’s talk.
Lynn Swayze is “The Expert’s Copywriter” and founder of the OfferTherapy™ System for Experts. You can check out her courses, community, and coaching at TheExpertsCopywriter.com.