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Contents

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

Qualifying New Leads . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

Declining a bad fit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

Scheduling a Call . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

The Magic Email . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Onboarding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

Surveying your clients . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

Asking For a Testimonial . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

Asking For a Referral . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

Following-up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

Weekend Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

Handling NDAs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

Email One-Liners . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

The Simple 5-Day Sales Follow-up Sequence That

Closes Deals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

Qualifying Prospects Phone Script . . . . . . . . . . 29

What NOT to say . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

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Next Steps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

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Introduction

Since jumping feet first in to consulting five years ago,

I’ve discovered that a shocking amount of my time and my

business is spent just sending emails. As a percentage of

time, I’d say my business (and yours) is unavoidably tied

to the success of those emails.

As principal of a web development agency, I live & die by

email - last year, I sent 11,448 of them.

By using email templates, I’ve been able to save myself

hours a day, decrease response times, and even fight scope

creep.

To get the most out of these email templates, there are

three tools I’d strong suggest you implement…

Canned Responses

If you use GMail, you can save yourself hours of copying

and pasting by using a Google Lab feature called “Canned

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Responses.” This feature allows you to save an email as a

canned response and use it over and over again without

needing to copy and paste into a new window.

1. Click the Labs tab, find Canned Responses, click the

Enable radio button to enable Canned Responses,

scroll down and click Save Changes.

2. Compose an email message you’d like to use over

and over again, and then click the arrow in the lower

right-hand corner of the message window.

I wish I’d set this up sooner when I think about how much

it saves me every single day.

Boomerang

Boomerang for Gmail lets you take control of when you

send and receive email messages. I’ve used it for years and

love it. It gives me three important features…

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Send an email later: I like to set expectations about clients

can hear from me. If I don’t expect clients to email me

on the weekend, then I shouldn’t send them emails on the

weekend either. But sometimes you just need to. So With

Boomerang, I can write an email now and schedule it to be

sent automatically at the perfect time like Monday at 9am.

Just write the messages as you normally would, then click

the Send Later button. Use their handy calendar picker or

our text box that understands language like “next Monday”

to tell Boomerang when to send your message.

Remind you if you don’t hear back: There are times you

need to make sure you follow up within a specific time

frame after sending a message. You can select to only be

reminded if nobody replies, or regardless. This way you

won’t let messages slip through the crack and will never

forget to follow up with people.

The best follow up reminders: Want a cleaner inbox, but

don’t want to lose track of important messages? Use

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Boomerang to take messages out of your inbox until you

actually need them. Just click the Boomerang button

when you have an email open, and choose when you need

it again. Boomerang will archive your message. At the

time you choose, it’ll pop back to your inbox, marked

unread, starred or even at the top of your message list.

You can grab Boomerang for free at http://www.boomeranggmail.com/

Signature

I know email signatures can be annoying, especially when

they’re littered with quotes and disclaimers and other

nonsense, but they really can work to your advantage. A

strong, professional email signature can set the frame

in a professional relationship that you’re an experienced

consultant.

I use https://htmlsig.com/ to create signatures that I can

just copy & paste in to GMail.

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Here’s mine:

*Kurt Elster, MBA is an ecommerce consultant who helps

Shopify stores double their revenue. 877-384-3740 x700 /

kgelster@ethercycle.com

3 S Prospect Ave #12, Park Ridge, IL 60068 http://ethercycle.com/

- http://kurtelster.com/

PS: To stay 100% productive for my clients, I only check my

email twice a day and can’t take unscheduled phone calls.

If you need quicker responses, my eCommerce Executive

Coaching program will give you 24/7 access to me. Just let

me know and we’ll have a short call to see if you’re a good

fit.*

Let’s break down what I’ve done here. I lead with my name

straight in to my fool proof positioning statement. At

a glance people can know exactly who I am and what I

can do for them. Use this formula to create your own:

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I’m a _______ who helps _______ with _______. Unlike my

competitors, _______.

After that I have my contact info including my address

and two websites where they can lean more about it. I

do this because I want to myself appear accessible and

transparent. That builds trust and credibility.

Using the templates

I’ve only provided you with email templates that I have

successfully used myself, repeatedly. You do not have use

them exactly as they are. Feel free to trim, join, edit, and

otherwise use these emails however makes the most sense

for you.

I typically start all my emails with “Heya $FIRST_NAME.”

Heya is informal, and that’s intentional. I’ll usually try to

balance humor and being authoritative. It’s a tough line

to walk. You want to be as friendly as possible, but you

want to retain your authority as the expert consultant you

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are. Maintaining that authority can mean the difference

between an easy project, and a scope creeping Eldritch

horror project.

Qualifying New Leads

If someone contacts me out of the cold, it’s often with an

email like, “I want to build Facebook but for poodles, how

much? a/s/l?” You know the kind, vague yet demanding all

at the same time. I reframe the situation, making myself

the prize, and qualify the client all at the same time with

this email.

Thanks for your note, I’m flattered you’d like to bring my

brain into the mix!

I’ve got a few quick qualifying questions:

1. Can you tell me more about yourself? (I’m picky

about who I work with.)

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2. Why start now vs six months from now or six

months ago?

3. Why choose me?

I ask because I want to make sure we’re successful working

together.

If it seems like we’d be a good fit, we’ll schedule a 30

minute call to discuss your business as well as how we can

help each other.

Looking forward to it :)

Declining a bad fit

One of the smartest things you can do for your business

and your sanity is to turn away bad fit projects. Here’s

how to do that politely, according to Austin Kleon

I need to say “no,” because this doesn’t feel like a good fit

for me, and I wouldn’t be able to do it well.

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But I would love to support you in a different way. [Offer

an alternative form of support here]

Thank you for again for thinking of me for this, I’m hon-

ored.

Best of luck!

Scheduling a Call

Once I’ve qualified a client, I’ll schedule a 15-30 minute

call with them to dive in to their business. This is another

opportunity to frame myself as the prized professional. To

accomplish that, I’ll reply with

Let’s schedule a call. I’ll be relying on you to call me

at the scheduled time. My phone number is (877) 384-
3740.

And then I’ll use the free and fantastic Assistant.to to

insert my availability directly in to the email. This way

there’s no back & forth and no double bookings. I also

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make them call me, which counter-intuitively decreased

the chance of a no-show because clients can see that I

fiercely protect my free time.

The Magic Email

What happens if someone disappears on you? First gently

nudge them, and if they still ignore, it’s time to send them

a “break-up” email. I call mine The Magic Email.

The Magic Email is simple, and you can use it today to stop

being ignored, and start getting replies. Ready? Okay, here

it is:

Since I have not heard from you on this, I have to as-

sume your priorities have changed.

That’s it. Nothing else. Send just that one line. It’s simple,

intentionally vague, and absolutely effective. I get at least

a 50% response rate with most of them being positive. I

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adapted it (based on split-testing) from Blair Enns’ excel-

lent Closing The Loop email.

It works because it makes it clear to the recipient that

you’ve moved on. Since people are loss averse, their

natural inclination is to reply immediately in order to

keep you from walking away. You’re taking back control

of the situation by declaring it over.

It’s the email equivalent of what I do with my kids at the

park. They don’t want to leave so I say, “Okay, bye, I’m

leaving” and start walking away. Immediately they yell,

“Waiiit!” & run to catch up with me (and I’ve yet to actually

have to leave them there.)

I know what you’re thinking. You think you can’t send

this because it just seems so rude. But it’s not rude, it’s

just direct. The person who doesn’t answer your emails

is rude. You’re just business. Business you can take or

leave. Remember, this person has already been ignoring

you for weeks so you have nothing to lose. I promise you’ll

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get an answer or closure. Worst case scenario is you’ll get

more radio silence, but at least you will have given yourself

permission to move on.

Try it. I promise more people will be impressed by your

tenacity than annoyed by it.

Onboarding

A prospect is not a client until they have signed on the

line which is dotted and made a deposit. As soon as that

happens, I send them to my onboarding, which is the inspi-

ration for this email. And truthfully, Nick Disabato’s client

onboarding packet for Draft was the inspiration for that

page.

Thanks again for choosing us. We’re a small business by

choice— I love being able go to work and grow businesses

like yours. Email me any time you have questions.

Allright, enough platitudes. Let’s get to work!

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Here’s a step-by-step on how to get started working to-

gether… [Insert step-by-step guides on whatever you need

the client to do. Examples: give you FTP access, add you to

Google Analytics, invite you to the company Slack, what-

ever it is you have every client do.]

A couple of other items you should know:

I work Monday through Friday, 9am to 5pm. I’m in

Chicago, so that’s Central Time. (I’m terrible at time

zones, so you may want to compare our time zones.)

During my normal work hours, you can expect a response

to emails within two hours. Outside of my work hours, I

do still check my email but not as often. (If I did, my kids

wouldn’t be very happy with me.)

Like you, I also take some holidays off. Expect intermittent

availability around most major US holidays, especially

Halloween (my anniversary), Thanksgiving, Christmas,

New Year’s, my birthday (January 24th), Memorial Day,

the Fourth of July, and Labor Day.

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Let me know if you have any questions about me, business

in general, or why your car makes that noise when you

turn left.

Surveying your clients

To grow your business, you need to evolve. One of the best

ways to gain insights in to how you can evolve is having

your customers tell you. Ask them to take a quick survey

to find where you excel and where you can add more value

to your client’s lives.

First: a big hearty thank you for being a client

Did you know that underneath my quickly-greying head

of hair lurks two large ears, which are all the better for

listening with?

Please put them to good use and let me know what you

think of our service. I hope your hand is sore from

counting all the money we’ve made for your business,

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but thumbs up or down, I want to know. Then I can work

on giving you more of the good stuff and less of the not-

so-good, starting with a large thank you for your humble

opinions.

It takes 47 seconds or less to give your feedback and not

only will it help us, it will help you out with improved

service in the future.

Here’s the link: Example Survey

My ears are primed and waiting…

Asking For a Testimonial

Here’s the thing about testimonials: they’re a pain to write.

Most of them they end up being lousy so even if you can

get them, they’re not great. That is of course until you start

writing them yourself. Yes, it’s really how the smartest

people get the best testimonials. I learned it from Eric

Davis, who wrote about it for Workshop. Check it out…

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I’m thinking of doing a case study about you on my web-

site, with your permission? I would also love to include a

testimonial from you about my work with you– something

like this would be perfect:

“Kurt helped us develop a great price match tool, provided

us insights in his first call with us, and conducted a survey

of customers that generated actionable insight to drive

our marketing strategy forward. Hopefully we’ll be able

to implement all that he mentioned.” Rusty Shackleford,

Startup Founder

In fact, if you’re busy at the moment, I can use that quote

for now. Just send me a thumbs up/down. Either way, let

me know, thank you!

Asking For a Referral

Having a system in place to get testimonials and referrals

from clients can make or break your business. That’s why

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I use this email template (based on one from Alan Weiss)

to ask all good clients how we can help each other…

Following-up

It’s important to stay in touch with past clients because

they’ll be a great source of recurring work for your busi-

ness.

====================

I wanted to reach out to see how you and your company

were doing and what sort of growth I might be partially

responsible for.

Whether it’s doubling the number of conversions of your

website, or freeing up time for you to do other things, I

want to hear about it.

Looking forward to it.

====================

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We’re looking to bring on new clients, and I wanted to see

if you knew anyone who might want to make more money

for their business through smart & effective design.

If you know anyone who might fit this profile, would you

mind setting up an introduction?

====================

Just wanted to follow-up on see how your business is doing.

Is there anything I can do to help grow your business?

Gimme a call on my cell if you need help. :)

====================

Weekend Work

As a competent professional, you don’t work on weekends.

And even though sometimes you do, you most certainly

never admit to anybody. Two reasons: keep yourself sane

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with no-work weekends, and you can then charge a hefty

rush fee for weekend work

I understand you want this completed before Monday,

however I typically don’t work during my personal time

on the weekend. If you absolutely need it done before

Monday I’d be happy to take care of you at my rush fee of

[2.5x regular price].

Which way do you want to go? I need to know ASAP to get

you on my schedule.

Handling NDAs

I loathe NDAs. They’re often a red flag by themselves, since

they indicate inexperience. Often most people really want

a non-compete but think they want an NDA. It’s silly. I’ve

got two different responses that will almost always reveal

that the client doesn’t really care about their NDA.

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Option 1, supplied by Nick Disabato I never sign NDAs as

a precondition of talking with a potential client. If you

don’t trust me enough that I won’t snitch, this isn’t a good

fit. However, if it’s a precondition of working with you, I

will sign a very narrow NDA after you’ve signed our Master

Services Agreement and Statement of Work.

Option 2, supplied by attorney Richard Magnone Sure, I’d

be happy to sign your NDA. However, due to the increased

legal liability, I do require a $500 non-refundable NDA fee

be paid first. To where should I send the invoice?

Email One-Liners

Below are some one-liners I picked up from Jonathan Stark,

and Ash Ambridge at http://www.themiddlefingerproject.org/.

If someone suggests you take a revenue share instead of

just paying you… “This is not a big deal for either of us.

There’s no need to become business partners over it, which

is essentially what you’re suggesting. I don’t really want to

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see your numbers and you probably shouldn’t be sharing

them anyway.”

Responding to a price objection… “I suspect that you are

viewing this project as a cost rather than an investment in

the future of your business. If you think $PROJECT is the

future of your business, then you should do this ASAP (and

to toot my own horn for a second, there is nobody better to

do it than me.) If instead you think mobile it’s a passing

fad, I’d be happy to recommend a junior developer.”

Responding to a price objection because a client says

they’re not profitable “If that’s true, I’ll gracefully bow out

now - I don’t feel right taking money from a business that

has fallen on hard times.”

Getting a decision made… “Either way, I’m cool with your

preference. Let’s just move forward one way or the other.”

Responding to an unwanted demand for rush work… “I

absolutely would if I could, but unfortunately, if I let you

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cut to the front, I’d have to give the same preferential treat-

ment to everyone else, which is a surefire recipe for a mad-

house.”

Limiting scope creep…

“Sure, I’m happy to make that change for you! That said, I

did want to add a quick note to let you know that, with this

change, we’ll exhaust our number of revisions included

within the scope of this project.”

“I’d be happy to offer that as an additional service, but I’m

afraid the project as quoted doesn’t account for it. If there

was a misunderstanding, I’m happy to get on a call and

walk you through what I’ll be doing during this project.”

“The budget made a lot of sense when we first developed it.

That said, in service to you, we may have to explore adding

to it if we want to see this thing through the right way.”

Take them to the principal’s office…

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“We may have had a misunderstanding— perhaps I wasn’t

clear about my expectations.”

“Is there something we need to discuss directly?”

Get more great one liners from The Middle Finger project

in their blog post “23 Phrases Every Stressed Out, Strung

Out, Well-Meaning (Yet Irritable) Business Owner Needs to

Memorize TODAY.”

The Simple 5-Day Sales Follow-up Se-

quence That Closes Deals

I send these as replies to an existing email thread so that

the recipient has a frame of reference, and I typically send

them spaced 24 hours apart. If you think that’s too often,

consider this: if no one has ever accused you of spamming,

then you’re at 1/100th the total volume of emails you can

send, so get to work.

01: Standard Questions

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did you have any questions I can answer?

02: Phone Call

haven’t heard back from you on this, did you want to

jump on a call to discuss it?

03: Incentive

not sure if I mentioned this on our last call, but I can

offer you a 10% discount if you pay 100% upfront, was
that something you were interested in?

04: The Nine Word Email

were you still interested in [DELIVERABLE] to achieve

[GOAL]?

05: The Magic Email

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Since I haven’t heard back from you on this, I have to

assume your priorities have changed.

The simple truth of sales is that you have to ask. If you say

nothing and do nothing, you’ll almost guarantee you’ll get

nothing. Sales is probably 10% charisma and 90% persis-

tence.

I just keep asking. Here’s why–

I used to be afraid to follow-up. I’d tell myself, “if they

didn’t respond, they must not want the deal!” but that’s

silly. That’s me making up excuses for someone else. Most

of the time people are just busy and miss emails or pro-

crastinate. Now I know that if I want something, I need

to follow up until the person makes a decision, yes or no,

so that we can both move on with our lives.

So just keep asking until you can get answer.

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Qualifying Prospects Phone Script

When someone first emails me, I ask a series of qualifying

questions to decided if they’re a good fit and worth the 30

minutes it takes a for an initial phone call. (I’ve automated

this process with Drip.)

Since I can’t automate phone calls just yet, I have a quick

script I run through that gives me all the answers I need to

write a great proposal (and double check to see if we’re a

good fit.)

1. Tell me about your business. – This is just a quick

overview and a good ice breaker.

2. How has your business performed over the last 12-

months? - This will give you a good picture of how

their business is doing in general. It’s also an in-

direct way to get a feel for budget. Though I use

productized consulting so my prices are both fixed

and advertised.

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3. What’s the goal of this project? - I want this answer

to either reveal a pain the client has or be a an obvi-

ous metric I can improve. Either are great to know

for a proposal.

4. Why start now vs six months from now or six

months ago? - This is one of my favorite questions.

It’s a thought provoker. Try it, this questions more

than any other works as a catch-all to reveal all

sorts of interesting things about the client and their

business. It’ll reveal problems they had in the past

and future plans.

5. Why choose me for your project? - Asking this will

get your client to flat out tell you what they like

about you. You can use this to make sure you’re a

good fit and so you can play that up in a proposal.

6. What’s your conversion rate now? - You can use any

metric for this, but you just need to know some quan-

tifiable thing that you can improve for them. Then

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you can say, “We’ll know this project is successful if

we increase X by 20%” for example

7. Let’s say I approve you as a client today. Can you

walk me through the process of you deciding to

work with me? - I love this question. It closes deals

on the phone. No one has ever told me their process,

they’ve just paused and said, “well we could just

get started.” You’ve forced them to think through

making a decision which usually reveals that there

is nothing actually stopping them from going with

you (all without you looking like a hard-selling

salesman). The first part also implies that you’re

still on the fence because you are an exclusive

hotshot who picks and chooses his clients carefully.

I should note I did not write these original questions. I

think I adopted them from Philip Morgan who likely in

turn adopted them from someone else smarter than either

of us.

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What NOT to say

Just as professional emails can help your business, some

emails can hurt your business. One of the common mis-

takes I see freelancers make in emails is waffle language.

Waffle language is the meaningless phrases you wrap your

words in because you’re not confident in what you’re say-

ing.

Look for phrases like… **Could we maybe* **I just sort of* **I

kinda* **I was just wondering if* **In my humble opinion*

**Sorry to be a bother but* **Well I was thinking we could*

**You probably won’t like it but* …and remove them!

It’s okay to be direct, in fact it’s a good thing. If you’re

direct, you’ll avoid confusion and save everyone involved

time.

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Next Steps

Setup Canned Responses in Gmail, take the best email tem-

plates from this document, and plug them into Canned

Responses as new templates. Write your own email tem-

plates for selling your services like products and save those

as well.

Making those changes will help you run a more stream-

lined business which will mean more profit and less stress

for you.

If you have any questions, ask me anything.

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