How to Track Your Inquiries
This tip is especially for service-based businesses. We'll bet that many of you already do this one, but in case a few of you don't — it's too important not to share. It's going to help with you with your sanity, your metrics, and your messaging.
Track your inquiries in an inquiry database
Set up a system to track your inquiries. For us (and our website clients!), that means we set up our processes so that every inquiry comes through a form on our website. We set up the back end so that every form submission automagically populates our inquiry database (aka a spreadsheet in Google Drive). Squarespace users may find this tutorial on form storage to be helpful. Alternatively, you could look into using a combination of Typeform, Zapier, and Google Drive. There are many other ways you can set this up — we like Google Drive because you can access it online from anywhere, and it's also easy to share with other members of your team.
Use your inquiry database to simplify. Having all of these inquiries in one place will enable you to streamline your response process and ensure that you never miss an inquiry.
Review keywords in your inquiries. Periodically take a step back to look at all of your inquiries in this one convenient spot (your spreadsheet). It's so much easier to scroll through this database rather than view each individual inquiry email. Look for trends among the clients who turned out to be your dream clients — what words did they use to describe how they felt when they first came to you? How did they describe their needs and wants? What were they overwhelmed with? Are they repeating your own keywords right back to you? Study their words and use them in your own future marketing. These are the words that will undoubtedly resonate with your future dream clients!
There are a hundred other reasons why an inquiry database will be useful for you — like seeing which kinds of inquiries turn into bookings and what time of year you get the most inquiries. So get on that! You'll thank yourself later!
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