Automating Your Prospecting Leads Follow-ups
As you know, I’m a huge believer in follow-up!
Sometimes I feel like a broken record. I teach it again and again and again because it really is that important.
Follow-up is the one habit that will make the most difference in your Avon business success.
Warning! This is a very advanced training topic – It is very long and very technical!
I have been working on this for quite some time, and what I am going to teach you today is going to take some internet experience, or at least willingness to really get in there and learn something new.
And it is going to take some money to make it work.
I know it looks like a lot, but don’t panic. Just take a breath and work through it one step at a time.
This system is not for everyone. In fact, it’s really just for the few who are ready for it. So if you’re not ready, in regards to skills or even wanting to spend the money, it’s totally not a problem.
If this isn’t for you at this time, please just skip over it and you can come back later when you’re in a better position to use this information.
Let’s take a look at how we follow up on leads.
We’ve been teaching you how to follow-up on Leads here.
This link is how you should be following up on all your leads, whether they are Leads that you purchase or leads that you have found on your own by doing shows, talking to people, and just going about your day, or wherever you get them.
I believe it takes grunt work for you to learn what you need to learn to be really successful in your business.
Because of that, I suggest that you DO NOT use this automated system until you reach the point where you are doing at least 30 or so follow-ups every day.
This is vitally important because it’s by doing this daily follow-up yourself that will help you create the habit to be consistent in your business.
It keeps you hands-on and very involved in the growth of your business. Even the simple act of copying and pasting emails and texts, and looking at those names over and over again, keeps you engaged daily.
Giving up on that intensive engagement in your business takes something away in the long-term.
But it’s also important to realize that eventually your follow-ups will get to the point where they are taking too much of your day, which leaves you with little time to get out there and prospect for new people.
Let’s free up some of your time with an automated follow-up system.
I have created an automated 3-year follow-up system that you can plug your prospects into and the system will do the work.
In order for you to use this, you will need to use the exact tools I am teaching, because through these tools I can share my system with you.
Please do not ask me to print off my emails and send them to you, or email them to you. I just do not have the time to do that.
My automated system is very much like my original follow-up system. The process is the same – it’s just automated.
These are the tools you will need:
For the Emails, we will be using AWeber.
AWeber is an affordable and easy to use email marketing and autoresponder tool, and will be a large part of our system. If you don’t already have an account, get yours here.
For the Text Messages, we will be using Project Broadcast.
Project Broadcast has the ability to send a text out as an order reminder to a large group of people. And it also has the ability to create a drip campaign. That is what we will be using in our system.
If you don’t already have a Project Broadcast, you can get yours here.
By using my link, you will receive 500 free credits on top of the subscription you purchase. Any unused credits will rollover each month.
Very important… Both of these programs have either an Affiliate Program or a Referral Program.
If I directly sponsored you into Avon, go ahead and use my links above. If someone else sponsored you, please check with them to see if they have a link. If not, you can go ahead and use my links.
As I mentioned above, it is critical that you use these two specific programs if you want to use my system.
System Training
When you get a new lead or prospect for your business, the first thing you need to do is Call, Text, and Email.
The call is something you will need to do yourself. I can’t help you with that. 🙂
But I can help with the texting and emails.
Because the email and text systems are not the same companies and work very differently from each other, they need to be done separately.
Note: For this training, everything I do is on a computer. It can all be done on a phone, but I don’t do it that way. If you’re on a phone, I assume you can figure out what I’m doing, or maybe use Google to help you.
Click Here for a spreadsheet that shows what this system looks like. (Note, my system has changed a little over time, so this spreadsheet is not 100% accurate. It’s just a representation so you can see what it looks like).
Email Follow-ups
Once you get an Account at AWeber, you will need to import my campaign.
First off, you will need to create a list.
Log into your AWeber account click “Lists” from the top of your AWeber control panel.
On this page, click the “Create A List” button to the right.
You will be taken to the “Set Up Your List” page. First, enter the name of your company or program that you are marketing. Then enter the website URL for the website that is associated with your company or program.
Under Company Name you can type “your Name Avon,” or whatever you choose.
Under Website URL, if you have a blog, use that. If not, you can use your Avon Online Store Link, or even the direct link to Join Avon.
You will also need to enter your physical mailing address, and then your name and your email address.
Then you will be taken to a Describe your List Page.
My List Name is just WorkWithLynn – You can use something similar or whatever you want.
My List Description just says:
Information about how you can work with Lynn to build an Avon business from home.
Then it will have you set up the confirmation email that goes out automatically anytime someone subscribes to your list.
We are going to show you how to not make them subscribe again because if they had to subscribe, you’d lose your prospects. So you can mostly go with the defaults on this section.
Now let’s turn off the Confirmation Message so that your prospects won’t have to confirm you adding them.
Hover over List Options and Click on List Settings.
Then Click on Confirmation Message on the left side.
Scroll down to Confirmation Message Settings and be sure both are set to Off.
Once you have your list set up, now you’ll need to import my messages into your list.
Go to your Follow Up Series page, under the Messages tab.
On that page, locate and click on the “Go to Follow Up Sharing” link.
Now add the follow-up sharing code you have in the text box provided in the field next to the blue “Load Follow Up Series” button and then click that button.
My Sharing Code is – workwithlynnh-e826c-$F
Now all my 38 emails will be loaded into your system.
You will need to edit every one of the emails with your own information.
Be sure to replace any links with your links. In some cases, I may have links to my story, or other pages, or even blog posts. You do not want to keep any of these or your prospect will be sent to my page and I will get the signup.
To Add Contacts:
Hover over the word Subscribers on the menu, and click on Add Subscribers. You can manually add them or import a list.
When you add people to your email campaign, the follow-up message will be your first message.
If you have more than 10 to add, you will need to import your contacts with a CSV file. You will need to explain how you got those subscribers (Mostly I say they filled out a form asking for information), and then click on “Do not ask my subscribers to opt-in to my list again.”
When this is done, and you’ve proofed, again and again, your email series will be ready to go.
If you run into any problems, AWeber also has a great Help function that spells out pretty much everything.
Text Follow-ups
Similar to the emails, once you get your Project Broadcast system setup, you will need to import my campaign.
Project broadcast uses a system called Bundles.
To access this, go to the more tab (the three lines) at the bottom of the left sidebar.
And then click on Bundles.
Once you are in the Bundles section, click on the Import Button (the little cloud at the top of the page)
My share ID for you to use to import this bundle is – uzVKN2xMy
Now my LeadFollowups-SellAvon campaign will be imported into your account, along with the 34 text messages.
Click on the Campaigns Icon (The Megaphone icon in the above image) to get to the Campaign.
You will need to edit every one of the texts with your own information.
Be sure to replace any links with your links. In some cases, I may have links to my story, or other pages, or even blog posts. You do not want to keep any of these or your prospect will be sent to my page.
If you are using the Shuffle Card, you will not be able to create a card for each person as you have in the past. Instead, you will share your Untrackable link.
Again, in my texts, you may find links to my store, or other pages, or even blog posts. You do not want to keep any of these or your prospect will be sent to my page and I will get the signup.
For instance, there is a text about “Earn $3,250 in the next 4 months or less with Avon.” Maybe you could swap out the image with the Pathway to Premier flyer instead of a link.
When this is done, and you’ve proofed, again and again, your text series will be ready to go.
Project Broadcast has a great YouTube Channel with lots of easy training. I strongly suggest you go through it to help you understand how their system works.
Setup Your Keywords and Tags
Project Broadcast uses a couple of things called tags and keywords. This is where you really going to go through the Project Broadcast YouTube Training. To keep it simple, I use the same names across the board.
Tags –
These are tags you apply to a customer and are used to search. A customer can have as many tags as you want.
For instance, my customers all have the tag Avon. When I’m sending out my order reminder text, I send it to everyone tagged Avon.
My Prospect Campaign is called SellAvon. So I tag these people with the SellAvon tag.
Keywords –
Keywords are used to assign that contact to a campaign. So, my campaign is called SellAvon, and so I apply the SellAvon Keyword to my prospect.
A keyword is also something where a customer could text your keyword to your list and they would automatically start to receive the texts in that campaign.
As soon as a keyword is applied to a contact, they will receive a reply message, so it’s important that you do not apply keywords at odd hours when you don’t want to actually text them.
Create a keyword called SellAvon
We’re just using this name to be consistent with my Prospecting Campaign. I suggest you keep it that way. (The system changes everything to lowercase. I just use Capital letters to help you see, and it really doesn’t matter, because the system will recognize it either way).
Click on Keywords – the little key icon on the left side of your screen.
Click on the + symbol (Add Keyword) and give it the name SellAvon.
Once your keyword is setup, click on the keyword on the left side of the screen.
On the right side of the screen, click on Add Campaigns to Join, and choose SellAvon. Now when you apply this keyword to a contact, they will be in this campaign and the texts will start going out.
Also, on the right side of the screen, click on the edit icon to the right on Reply Message. You will use the template that came in my bundle.
Once you’re in the message, click on the Template button (looks like a page with writing on it), and choose my Prospect 1st Text.
You will need to edit the text with your own links and replace my image with a picture of you.
As I mentioned earlier, the reply message will go out immediately as soon as you apply the keyword to the contact, so be sure to not apply the keyword at some odd hour in the middle of the night. 🙂
So now your keyword is setup.
Test Your Campaign
Now you’re ready to add your contacts, but I strongly suggest you test your campaign before adding anyone.
To test your campaign, click on Campaigns on the left menu bar. Click on the name of your campaign.
And then on the far right side, click on the 3 dots, and click on Fast Forward. It will ask you who you want to send it to, and this will send you a text every minute so you will get all of the texts.
This is your last opportunity to make sure you’re happy with everything before adding contacts.
Be sure to read each text and check each link to make sure everything is good.
Now you can add Contacts
Contacts can be added in several ways.
You can import your contacts, or you can add them manually. I’m not going to teach you this. I suggest you watch Project Broadcast’s training video.
When you import your contacts, you will be asked what tags you want to apply. Be sure to apply the SellAvon tag.
I also add a new tag with each import using the date, i.e. 122418.
This means when I add additional tags during the import, it looks like this: SellAvon, 122418.
The reason for this is when you go to apply your keyword in batch you can search for everyone with a specific tag. If this is the 2nd or 3rd… time you’re importing people, if you apply the keyword to everyone with the SellAvon tag, even the ones already on your list will get your Text #1 response message (which you DO NOT WANT to happen). So when I am applying a keyword to a batch that I imported, I search for the date tag, i.e. 122418.
Once you have your contacts in the system, you’ll need to apply the keyword to attach them to the campaign.
From the Keyword Screen (the key on the left menu bar), you can click on your keyword, and then on the far right side, click on the 3 dots, and click on Apply Keyword.
When the screen comes up asking for which contacts, click on the tag symbol on the far right and search for your date tag, i.e. 122418 and apply the keyword to everyone with that tag.
To apply the keyword to an individual contact, click on Contacts, choose your contact. Click on the 3 dots on the far left side, and click on Apply Keyword.
As soon as you apply that Keyword, your Text #1 will immediately go out.
Putting This System into Use
Once you are all set up, and you receive a new lead. You will still need to do three things:
1 – Call them
2 – Add them to your email campaign
3 – Add them to your text campaign by applying the Keyword SellAvon
That’s it!
Please do not just add people who did not request information. If you purchased a Lead, they did request information. They filled out a form somewhere. 🙂 And when you meet someone, you’re getting their contact information for follow-up. But just don’t randomly add people that you know into your lists.
This is important because if you get too many spam complaints, AWeber will shut you down.
Ultimately by automating your follow-up process, you’ll be better able to stay in the game. Manually copying and pasting texts and emails is not necessarily a good use of your time, especially when you are doing dozens or more every day.
Every single prospect deserves your uttermost patience, empathy, and availability. Automating this process gives them the time they need to do their research and think about it while you stay in touch with them, and then when they respond to you, you are personally available for them.
To the prospect, it all looks very professional and relevant to them. Not only does it ensure a swift and guaranteed follow up, but it also helps build up trust, so when the next human-to-human contact occurs, the prospect is warm and more likely to want to engage.
And one last thing… I am giving my follow-up system for you to use if you so choose. It works well for me. I accept no responsibility if you don’t receive the results you’d like, or if somehow you run into trouble using it.
Good luck!
——> Did this article help you? If so, it would mean a lot to me if you would share it with others!!! And, share your comments below! I would LOVE to know more about you and your thoughts on this subject! <——
Let’s have some conversation!
EXPECT Success!
By Lynn Huber
Join our OnlineBeautyBiz Facebook Group for more support
Hi Lynn!
Thank you sooo much!
You are amazing ♥
Thanks Priscilla! I appreciate you! ?