Tag “work with a client”

Nine steps to writing a good follow-up email ★

Most people spend hours writing follow-up emails after meetings with their clients. They keep looking for the right words that will work. However, follow-up emails aren’t about the right words and metaphors. Speed and accuracy is all they require.

A follow-up email is easy to turn into a template and reduce the time of writing one to 20−30 minutes maximum. The meeting itself is where all the magic happens. Here’s a ready-to-go plan to nail follow-up emails, follow it and you’ll be able to build trust with your clients way faster than before:

  1. Read up and prepare questions. The best meeting is the one you’ve planned in advance.
  2. Show up on time, don’t make your client wait for you.
  3. Remind participants why you’re having this meeting and draw a short plan of what’s going to happen next.
  4. Ask questions, shut up and listen to the answers—that's the most important part. Your client has all the necessary information you need to solve your problem.
  5. Ask additional questions to clarify anything you didn’t get or have doubts about. Don’t be timid, it won’t help you to do a good project.
  6. Make notes during the meeting. Write down only core ideas and thoughts. It shouldn’t be a word-by-word transcript.
  7. Edit notes and turn them into a list of agreements, certain steps, and tasks with deadlines.
  8. Send the list of agreements and the following steps to your client within one hour span after the meeting. Ask them if you got it right and offer to make suggestions to your notes if not.
  9. I added this point to make the total number odd.

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Start with questions, not writing

One of the most common mistakes writers do is writing without research. That’s one of the reasons so many authors have a writing block and wrinkle their foreheads over the blank sheet. They simply don’t have an idea what they’re going to write about!

It may sound ridiculous, but writing doesn’t begin by opening a laptop or picking a pen and a notebook. The stories are born in your mind, not on the screen of your laptop. That’s why I recommend starting with questions and researching the topic in the first place.

Imagine that you’re writing a commercial copy for the website. Schedule a call or a meeting with a client and ask them about their business. Where their strengths lie, how they managed to overcome the previous crisis, how they see their mission, and why their product is considered the best on the market. Of course, questions may differ depending on the area you’re working in.

Ask as many questions as you can find, don’t interrupt, just listen and make notes. Now that you have all the necessary ingredients for your story, wait till it gets done. It works the same way we make soup: we put the ingredients in the pot and then leave it on the stove till it’s ready. The more complex the topic the more time it may require to research and get things clear. Sometimes I need to hold several meetings with a client before I can draw the first draft.

The hardest part of writing is to find a metaphor to convey the principal idea of your story clearly and succinctly. When you find one, it’s easy to unfold the story. Questions and research help you decompose the problem you’re trying to solve for a reader. So, ask questions, listen carefully, and you won’t miss your metaphor.

Never start writing until you have the whole story unfolded in your head until you know exactly what you’re going to write about. When you know how you’re going to tell your story, writing a good text will become a matter of your skill and experience, not talent or inspiration.

Never start writing until you have the whole story unfolded in your head until you know exactly what you’re going to write about.

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