If you want more design clients you need to follow-up. It requires many hats to run a successful home-based design business. Beyond being a designer, you need to wear the hat of a bookkeeper, a receptionist, a marketer, a salesperson and many more. Often it's the salesperson hat that scares people away, but it's one of the most important ones you will have to wear. To have a successful design business, you need to be a competent salesperson. You don’t have to be great. You don't even have to be that good at it. Just being competent is all you need to succeed. I know that being a salesperson has a certain stigma to it. Salespeople are often depicted on TV and the big screen as annoying, slimy people. But the fact of the matter is, everyone is a salesperson in one way or another. If you've ever convinced your spouse to go out for Italian food when they were in the mood for Mexican, you're a salesperson. If you've ever told your kids they can get a dessert if they eat all their vegetables, you're a salesperson. If you've ever sold your design services to a client, you're a salesperson. Being a salesperson One thing all good salespeople have in common is persistence. Without persistence, they would never make a sale. As the salesperson for your design business, you have to be persistent when searching for new clients. That persistence requires you to follow-up with someone after your first contact with them. All salespeople know that the majority of successful sales happen during the follow-up. The same applies when you are pitching new clients. Rarely will a potential client hire you the first time you meet them. But if you are persistent and follow-up with them, you drastically improve your chances of winning them over. When to follow-up You need to follow up any time you meet a potential client for the first time. Some of these situations may include; Cold calling (email, phone or in person) Client presentations (When a client ask you to meet them for the first time) Pitches (When you are one of many designers pitching a proposal to a client) Request For Proposals (Either RFPs you've been asked to submit or those you've discovered yourself) If you don’t follow up, you are leaving things open for someone else to sweep in and use your initial effort as traction to win over your potential client. Your follow-ups should continue until you establish a conversation with the client or they decline your requests for further communication. More on that last part later. How to follow-up There are many ways to follow-up with someone, and there are different stages to the follow-up to which you should adhere. Work your way through the follow-up stages until you establish a communication with the client. Here are a few things you can try. After your first in-person meeting or phone conversation. Within two days of the meeting, you should thank them for taking the time to talk to you. Nothing more. One to two weeks after the meeting, Send them a message asking if they have had a chance to think about what you had discussed. If you do not get a response after your second follow-up, you could send them a message saying you understand they may not be ready to proceed with anything now, but you can follow up again with you in a few months. Mark your calendar and follow-up again after the time you specified in step 3. After sending a first contact email or voicemail. Usually, this falls under the scope of cold calling. You send a potential client an email or leave them a voicemail message introducing yourself. Don't worry if you don't immediately hear back from them. Follow these steps for more engagement. After a few days, call or email them again and ask if they received your first message. After one or two weeks contact them again and politely tell them you have not heard back from them and you were just wondering if your messages were getting to them. If they still don’t respond, you can follow-up by saying you understand they are busy s