160: When to Follow-Up and When to Let it Go
Would you believe me if I told you that some of my biggest contracts began with "no's" to my pitches? Spoiler alert: it's true. Not every single opportunity is going to say yes, and you may never hear back from most of them.
Today I'm sharing how I follow up on my own pitches when I don't hear back. Listen in as I highlight my best practices in following up, how to continue to nurture that relationship, and how you can take action today!
If you loved this episode and it motivated you to work on more polished presentations, I’d love for you to leave a review on iTunes and tell me about your biggest takeaway. Take a screenshot of you listening on your device, post it to your Instagram Stories, and tag me @jessicarasdall.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
IT'S NOT ABOUT YOU
Just like with everything business/speaking we need to look at the situation from the other person's perspective. ALWAYS. It's not always about you. I know I say this all the time but it's worth a reminder.
When we're pitching ourselves to podcasts, speaking opportunities, or collaborations in our business we tend to personalize the experience. I get it, I do it too. It's difficult NOT to when we are pitching ourselves, our services, or our message to be a part of someone else's platform.
THEIR PERSPECTIVE
What do things look like for them right now? We only see a tiny glimpse on social media but if they're sharing how they're in the middle of a big launch or traveling - it's safe to assume your pitch is not a priority in their current reality.
Let's say you've done that. You've been keeping an eye on them and now seems like a great time.... What about their life outside of social media? What else may be going on?
Where things get tricky is when we are SO focused on not bothering the other person that we stop reaching out.
My favorite is hitting reply on the email and saying, "just wanted to pop this back up to the top of your inbox" - I know that my inbox can wild. We open an email to read it and we have the best of intentions to respond... but then it's time for our next call, we get interrupted, etc and it doesn't get answered. Before we know it a flood of new emails have come in and that one is g-o-n-e to place where emails die.
WHEN SOMEONE DOESN'T RESPOND
If someone hasn't responded to you - it's probably not that they're ignoring you. It's likely one of the following reasons:
lost in the inbox
va opened it
got distracted
they are bringing it to a team meeting before responding
they're not in a season of selecting speakers
you sent it to the wrong person
it went to spam
they're dealing with life stuff
I could go on and on and on about all of the reasons they're not answering you.
Here's how you can take action when they haven't responded:
KEEP SHOWING UP - they're watching. The second they heard from you, you went on their radar - stay there.
Hit reply and follow up
Release the outcome from your expectations - keep moving
There's magic in following up, but when you hold on to those 'unresponded' opportunities for too long - they stop you from reaching out to others.
The way we teach our students to navigate this inside of the academy is to track their outreach activities and cycle opportunities through.
RELATIONSHIPS matter.
Make the space to consistently be going through the cycle of
researching opportunities
building relationships
asking to be a part of it
preparing for the event
delivering your presentation
If you make this a routine that you do consistently, you'll always have opportunities in the pipeline.
Where people go WRONG is that after someone doesn't respond to the pitch - they move them out of this cycle entirely. They're considered cold and done. Why? Does a relationship with them no longer matter? You're better than that - we're not about transactional relationships.
If someone doesn't respond, move them out of your pitch phase and back into relationships. You never know when they're going to come around.
Keep on Keeping on
Keep showing up, keep sharing value, keep connecting with them organically (and genuinely) and if you're supposed to speak there - you will. Just stay top of mind... but top of mind doesn't necessarily mean at the top of their inbox.
If you're not already a member of the academy, we'd love to invite you to apply to join The Speaking Strategy Academy. You'll get instant access to our A-Z speaking training system with video lessons, transcripts, scripts, templates, and more.... access to our live group coaching calls, personalized 1:1 feedback on your work from me, and an opportunity to present your work live in front of our community for hot seat coaching and feedback. What are you waiting for, friend? Apply today!
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Read the Transcript from this Episode
Transcript for Episode 160:
When you're pitching yourself for new opportunities in your business or a stage to speak on, do you ever wonder if that's an opportunity you should keep pursuing or one that you should let go. In today's episode, I'm going to show you exactly how to know when to follow up and when to let the pitch go.
Welcome back to another episode of The speak to scale Podcast, where we're helping small business owners just like you grow and scale their companies by speaking on stages, podcasts, webinars and more. I'm your host, Jessica Rasdall. And after speaking for over fifth teen years, I've learned a thing or two about sending a pitch and not hearing anything back. So if you feel like you're the only person who has been ghosted on a pitch or an email or overlooked for an opportunity, first and foremost, I want to let you know, you're not alone. But I also want to let you in on the fact that some of my largest speaking contracts to date have come from initial nose, or initial no responses. And they are people who came back years later, and ended up booking me not just for a little quick presentation, but for a giant contract. So in today's episode, I want to unpack for you what it looks like when we're sending a pitch for both ourselves, and the organizer. And I really want to help you know exactly what to do. When you're in a scenario where you've put in for an opportunity and you're not getting a response, I'm going to show you what you should do what you should not do. Again, these are just my suggestions, but you know, they work. And then I'm going to make sure that you leave today's episode feeling confident in doing something that most people do not do when it comes to pitching. And I firmly believe that's why I don't have to pitch myself very often when it comes to speaking, that I'm able to do less and do it better, because I stay super focused on one, one tiny activity that I'm going to tell you about today. So let's get into it.
Listening to the podcast is a great first step. But I want you to go take action. So if you are ready to apply everything you've learned here on the show, listen up, we took all of our best resources, like our plug and play crafting your story workbook, or how to select your speaking topics, workbook, resources on crafting your talk, finding and pitching events, we put them all together inside of the speaker scale vault, and we put them in order, so you know exactly what to do and when to do it. to scale your business with speaking, ready to unlock the entire vault, head on over to speak to scale vault calm or click the link in our show notes. But be sure to use the code podcast for a special discount for me.
When it comes to putting ourselves out there, and whether it's filling out an application to speak or pitching to someone directly. If you're anything like me, we can teeter on this line of you know, I don't want to be a pest. And I don't want this to fall through the cracks, right? Like we know that. We want to follow up we want to see this thing through but we don't want to come off as annoying. So how can we follow up intentionally without tainting future relationships with hosts?
The first thing we need to just get out of the way is that pitching is not about us. It is not about you, friend, it's not about me. I mean, like, unless you're pitching me, but it's not it's not about us. Just like everything in business and speaking even life, we need to take the time to look at the situation from somebody else's perspective. And always like period, point blank, because it's just not about us. And I know I say this all the time. And you're probably so sick of me saying this, but it's worth a reminder. And I'm going to say it in case you're listening to this show for the first time today. Because when we're pitching ourselves to speak on podcasts, for in person opportunities for collaborations in our business, we personalize that experience. You know, I do it too. It's difficult not to do it, especially when we're pitching ourselves or a personal brand, our services, our message, something that we have worked really hard to build. It feels personal and it feels intimate.
But if we don't take the time Time to say, you know, what did things look like for that from this other person's perspective, then we can get all in our head and think, well, they're not responding because they don't like me. Or they're not responding because I'm not good enough or whatever, insert whatever thing we will tell ourselves. But we really need to start to think about, what did things look like for this person right now, the person on the other side of the application, or the email, or the DM or the phone call, whatever it might be, you know, we only see a tiny glimpse of their life, or their business on social media. And, you know, if they're even sharing what they've got going on, or if there's somebody who doesn't show up regularly, we don't know what's going on behind the scenes. Maybe we do see though, we want to start to see like, what does that public per sec perception look like? What are they putting out into the world? Do? Do we know that they're in the middle of a giant launch? If so, that's probably the priority, not the pitch you sent over? Do we know that they are they're traveling their kids just started school that, you know, they've been under the weather. Like, there's so many different things that could be going on? And the first thing we want to do is really look at, what have they been sharing about? Are there other things that are maybe taking priority?
And even if we've done that, so we've been following them? we chat with them via dm, like, we're on their newsletter, and we're keeping an eye on them on social and everything feels great right now. But what about their life outside of social media? Right, like what else could be going on? You know, if we hang out on Instagram together, which I hope you do, I hope we chat, because that's my favorite place to talk to you. But if we hang out over on Instagram, you know that while I show up, and I share about homeschooling and our family, and I'll share, I've started to share a little bit about this autoimmune journey and other things like that. There's still so much I don't share that I keep private, that I keep to myself, and I hope, I hope there's so much in your life that you keep to yourself to their stuff that sacred and we don't have to share it with everybody. So this is where things get tricky. Because when we're so focused on not bothering somebody else, right, where we started to think, like there's this fine line of we want to be considerate. We don't want to bombard them when they're going through something difficult. But when we get so fixated on not bothering them, we stop reaching out all together, right?
Maybe we say, Well, I don't want to bother them. I don't want to send another email, I don't want to follow up with this, they're gonna think I'm really annoying or that I'm desperate or insert, again, whatever it is, you're thinking, I want you to start to think about it again, from their perspective. And I just always, the way that I approach this personally, is I want to extend the grace to somebody else, that I would hope they would extend to me, right? Like, I hope somebody would give me this kind of grace. Because I know that personally, my inbox can get wild, right, we open up an email, we have the best of intentions, we read it, we're ready to respond to it. And then something happens.
We realize it's time for our next call, we get interrupted or phone rings, that kid barges in whatever happens and that email never gets answered. Before we know it a whole new flood of emails have come in. And that one that we had the best of intentions to respond to is g o n e to that place where emails go to die. I don't know where it is. But I know I've had sent a lot of error over the years. And so when I send an email to someone, when I pitch myself or put myself out there, you know, or I send that scary email and they don't respond. My first thought is not, they don't like me, I'm not good enough. My first response is, their inbox is probably like mine. And so what I would want somebody do for me is to pop that email right back up to the top of my inbox A week later, right and say, Hey, Jess, you know, this might have gotten lost in the shuffle. So I just wanted to pop it back up here for you. I appreciate when somebody does that for me, like I don't find that annoying in any way, shape, or form. And I would hope that the person on the receiving end of my email feels the same way. Because I know things can get overlooked and they can get lost.
And I don't assume that somebody reads every single one of their emails because if somebody hasn't responded to your pitch, it's probably not that they're ignored. Are you It could have gotten lost in their inbox, another team member could have opened it, maybe they got distracted, like I often do. Maybe they're bringing your email in your pitch to a team meeting before responding to discuss this opportunity with the rest of their group, maybe they're not in a season of selecting speakers, maybe you sent it to the wrong person, maybe it went to spam. Maybe they're dealing with life stuff. I mean, like, I could literally go on and on and on, for all of the reasons that somebody has not responded to your pitch, that have nothing to do with your value.
I'm gonna say that one more time, there are 1000s of reasons, somebody has not responded to your email that has nothing to do with your value. You are valuable, you bring something incredible to the table. And whether you are a great fit for that opportunity or not. Their response is not the thing that determines your value. And if nobody has told you that, I want you to know that. Okay, please know that. So when somebody doesn't respond, what should we do? Right, even if we're not going to personalize it, and we're not going to get upset about it, what do we do? First and foremost, like this has to be a non negotiable I need you to like, make a pinky promise with me today. Because this, these, the nose, and the no responses can throw us off. So pinky promise, I've got my I'm literally recording this with my pinky up in the air right now. So you better put yours up.
But pinky promise me that you're going to keep showing up. keep showing up on your social platforms, keep doing the great work you're doing. keep letting people know that you are available to be booked to speak, keep sharing value without expecting anything returned. Because the second you send that email over the second you send that pitch, you are now on their radar. They're watching you, whether that's good or bad, like they're, they're paying attention to you. And you want to be on their radar, right, so stay there. But But this, this is the point I need you to know, staying on someone's radar does not mean you have to stay at the top of their inbox. Okay, staying on someone's radar does not mean you need to stay at the top of their inbox. We're going to go into that a little bit more in a second. But let me say this. So when you send the email over or you send the pitch, and they don't respond, I want you to keep showing up first and foremost.
And I want you to give yourself like a week, right, or whatever it looks like, if you're an academy student, you've got our new action guide that tells you exactly when you should be following up, just follow the calendar. But if you know set the date that you're going to follow up, and then when it's time to follow up, just hit reply to the email, pop it back up to the top of their inbox, let them do exactly what I said I want someone to do for me, or whatever feels good for you. But I like the good old, hey, you know, just want to pop this up to the top of your inbox and other things can get lost along the way. Following up on this, whatever it looks like not, don't don't be adding in any weird feelings don't make this uncomfortable, right? Don't make them feel bad for not responding to you. Because that's just gonna make it weird. You know, if you can have a quick, a way that somebody can respond to you very quickly, they're much more likely to respond. So the other thing I want you to do after you keep showing up, you hit reply your follow up. Once you've done that, once you've sent your follow up, I want you to release the outcome of their response from your expectations, like, keep going. Because while there is so much magic, and following up, I like to follow up a few times like no shame in my game, I know the fortunes in the follow up. But if you get to a place where you are holding on so tightly to those unresponded opportunities, if you hold on to them for so long and so tight you it stops you from reaching out to other opportunities. And that might very well stop you from reaching out to like your best opportunity to date.
And I don't want you to be in that position where you're so fixated on that one that hasn't happened yet, that you don't have your eyes focused on the ones that could happen before you. So the way we teach our students inside of the speaking strategy Academy to navigate this is to track their outreach activities in cycle those opportunities, cycle those leads through a series of statuses essentially, you know, researching opportunities, building relationships, pitching yourself asking to be a part of it, preparing for the event and delivering the presentation. And if you have not listened to Episode 156 understanding Speaker pitch timelines, I want you to go listen to that one right after this episode 156, we'll link it in the show notes for you. But that one breaks down these cycles. Okay, it's going to show you what the pitch timeline looks like, how we move through this, how you should operate that. And if you can make that a routine that you do consistently, you always have opportunities in your pipeline to pitch. And those are the ones that I'm talking about that I want you to stay focused on the other opportunities, and not fixated on the people who haven't respond to you. Now, where most people go wrong, I've never shared about this publicly. So I want to be like, don't tell anybody but but also tell your friend to come listen to the podcast. So I'm just gonna have to deal with this and realize I'm sharing it. So yes, tell your friends to come listen to the podcast. So where most people go wrong, and where your friend may go have gone wrong, and they should come listen, is that after somebody stops responding to a pitch, you know, after we get that like where it feels like cold, a cold pitch, not a warm lead anymore. Most people will move that opportunity out of the cycle entirely. They put them on a list of like cold or deadly, they're like, they're they're out of the picture. And why?
Like, I want you to really think about that. Think about your sales process. When somebody stops responding to you, are they just out of the picture entirely? Does the relationship with them no longer matter? Of course it does work, we are better than that. We're not here for transactional relationships, we don't only want to forge a relationship with someone who's going to book us to speak, if someone didn't respond, I want you to move them out of that pitch phase. And back into relationship building. I'm going to say that one more time, in case you didn't catch it. If somebody is not responding to your pitch, don't take them off your list, move them back into the relationship building phase, you never know when they're going to come around, and you very well may have pitched them too early or out of season, or at a bad time. And taking the time to build a deeper relationship with them is going to make that yes, easy. You know, I want to encourage you to keep showing up, you know keep sharing value connecting with them organically and connecting with them genuinely, not just reaching out when you want to be on their podcast, or reaching out when you want them to put your name in or something or you want them to share your content like no be more focused in on being interested in what they are doing, then making them interested in what you are doing.
That's the stuff that builds solid relationships that lets them know you're a high value speaker who isn't focused on the spotlight, who's focused on doing great work and serving people from the stage. And if you're supposed to speak on that stage, you will eventually but speaking is a long game. And sometimes it takes years for opportunities to go from a pitch to actual presentation. And that's okay. That's why we've got to stay in that cycle of researching building relationships, asking to be a part of it. And moving on through, if we just have a list of 10 opportunities that we want to speak at. And those 10 people don't respond. We're gonna feel deflated. So instead of working off numbers like that, I want you to focus on the relationship. Focus on staying top of mind, but not top of inbox. You can do this friend, you have an important message to share. So keep putting it out there.
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