In this episode, we discuss that when you reach out to folks, you just need to keep trying again. And if you do this, it can open a lot more opportunities for yourself.
Full Transcript
Hi Everyone, welcome to the You’re Daily Cup of Joe Podcast, with your host Joe Bautista. In this podcast, my goal is to give you quick lessons on how to grow yourself physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually so you can have better careers, better relationships, and better personal finances.
I’m also the author of the book “More You Know, More You Grow: How to Get Better Every Day”. In this book, I wrote down over 30 tips to help you grow in those four cornerstones. I’m also the founder of Grow With Joe, where I combine self-development coaching and financial planning for Latino Professionals.
In today’s episode, we’re are going to talk about how to overcome the thought of feeling too pushy when following-up. You might send one text or give one phone, then assume the other person is just ignoring you. I used to think this way but after listening to many other business folks and reading books like the Third Door, I realized that I just need to keep following-up. You also might need to overcome a gatekeeper to get to the person you want to get.
How you follow-up with someone will depend on what tactic you need to use. If you’re like me and trying to reach busy professionals, that have families and other obligations, I need I just need to reach out with another phone call. I don’t take it as them slighting me, they’re just busy and I need to try again.
There are many times when someone texted me when I was busy, I looked at it and went back to my activity and I just forgot to reply. Then I look to my messages and say, oh crap, I forgot to reply. If this happens to me, then I’m sure it is happening to other people I’m reaching out to.
The key thing is that when you follow-up, don’t be a jerk about it. I remember someone sent me a text to do a survey, and I looked at it but didn’t do the survey, I wanted to do it but I was busy on my task. Then I got a text a couple of days later saying it would only take a couple of minutes. I was close to not doing the survey but I know that people don’t know how to be polite sometimes. I did the survey but if it was someone else, I could see how that follow-up response could put somebody off from doing the survey.
I know that I don’t know what the other people I’m reaching out to is going through, so I will use tact when I follow-up. I remember one time I didn’t use tact, and I feel really bad and I know I wouldn’t want to be treated the same way.
To help me a follow-up, I have to believe that my services are what that person needs. I do financial planning and I know no one’s financial plan is perfect and there some shortfalls that people need to fix. Plus if I can help that person become more financially prepared for life and retirement, then that can add a lot of positive externalities to this world. They can have less stress, which could lower their blood pressure, which means they don’t need to get on medication to control their high blood pressure. They can also fund their dreams and just live their best life. Plus if I coach someone on how to get a better job or have a better life outside of financial planning, then that can provide similar benefits.
If don’t believe that the best thing for them is me and my services, then I’m going to be very unlikely to try again. If you look at financial literacy rates and preparedness for retirement, people need a lot of help and I need to be the person to help people out. I was reading this book called the Third Door by Alex Banayan and he wanted to write a book for young professionals on how to be successful. He wanted to reach out to people like Bill Gates, Lady Gaga, and other famous people in their field to see what caused them to be successful. He gives a pretty good analogy that causes them to try again.
He says that success is like a night club and there are three ways to get in. You can wait in line and wait your turn to get in, you can pay your way in, or you can find the third door which might cause you to ask different people to access to the third door or bang on the door countless times until they let you. A really good book to show that success isn’t a straight line and how you just need to keep trying. In the book, Alex had to reach out to folks over and over again to help him write his book and he went through a lot of ups and downs to help him become a speaker and best selling author. It’s also crazy that he went on the price is right and hacked it so that he could win the grand prize. He then used the proceeds from the game show to pay for his lifestyle while he researched and wrote the book.
One important lesson from the book is that you need to have many spinning plates at once. If you spend all your time on the thing, then when that opportunity expires, you might be left with nothing. This happened to him and it’s happened with me, so you need to make sure that you’re reaching out to many other people at the same time. If something doesn’t work out, then you want to make sure that you have other opportunities that you can grab. The key is that you need a pipeline where you follow-up periodically and I use a CRM system to help me out with this. I just make a contact, record the date that I did that contact and put a reminder in the system to follow-up.
I only take people off the list who say they don’t want to be contacted anymore. A no is no, but a no answer is a request for a follow-up. I’ve spent up to two years trying to make someone a client and the fortune is in the follow-up. Every time they didn’t answer, I just put them in the category of needing to be contacted again in the future. You have to remember that the squeaky wheel gets the oil. This concept of trying again applies to other parts of your life and you can see that if you just try again and again, you can increase the likelihood of getting what you want.
That’s it for today’s episode, and to summarize it, when you’re reaching out to folks and they don’t answer, don’t assume that they don’t want to talk to you. Just follow-up again until they actually give you a no. Don’t call every five minutes but call every week and just focus on the other people that you need to follow-up with until it’s your time. This will ensure that you are providing yourself more opportunities in life and not getting left behind.
Thanks for listening today! To get a free copy of my book “More You Know, More You Grow: How to get better every day” just go to my website growwithjoe.me/book and just pay for shipping and handling.
I have a quiz on my website that grades your inner circle, so if you want to find out if your inner circle is an A, B, C, D, or F, you can take that quiz at growwithjoe.me/quiz
I’m also trying to do a feedback Friday episode, so if you have a question that you would like to have my answer on the air, just e-mail me at [email protected]
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Thanks for joining me today and remember if you go with Joe, you can grow with Joe, cause Joe knows Dough.
*Music outro
