What is a Recap Email?
What exactly is a recap email. Let’s start with what it’s not.
* It is not an opportunity to tell the prospect in writing how great you are and why they should hire or buy from you and your company.
* It is not the sending of references or even digital brochures of product information.
A recap email is exactly what it says, a recap of the conversation that you’ve had, whether that is on line, on the phone or in-person. There are specific things that you want to cover in your recap email. BUT, without having a truly consultative ‘interview’ first, your recap will be much less effective.
A recap email is a wonderful way of confirming what was discussed, what was agreed upon with the appropriate next steps. Since it is truly a recap, there should be no surprises!! What that means is when done properly the recap is used to reconfirm what you have already discussed. The recap email is not to be used to teach something new.
At the end of that meeting when you summarize everything, and you set another meeting for your proposal – if in fact that’s how your business works – when you walk away, all the things that you agreed on, and you summarize them, you send in what I call a Recap email. And that is
Your recap email is much more in-depth then we talked about earlier. A follow up email involves what their issues are, a recap of each of those things, what you discussed – investment or money-wise – and what you both agreed the next step would be if in fact they like your recommendations. That’s imperative to have in there. All it is is a recap of what you both agreed on. And if you do this right, you should almost get your prospect reading that email and saying ‘they get me, they heard me, they listened.’ That’s what we’re looking for
The anatomy of the recap email
To have a great recap email, there are several things that need to happen. Like previously mentioned, The key to all of this is the ‘interview’ meeting previous to the recap email.
- You must be able to ask enough good questions and learn enough about the ‘why’s’ of the need. What is the reason they need your product or service? What is the effect of not moving forward? what if things continue the way they are? What happens if nothing changes? These are a few of the questions that need to be asked and truly understood before moving on.
- You must be able to have some discussion about investment and cost. This is so often skipped because we believe this should be covered in the proposal itself. Yes it will be discussed there but it must be at least discussed in generalities here so not to waste either of your time.
- The one thing that will lengthen your selling cycle the most and give you the most “think it overs” is not having an if/then discussion. An if/then discussion is understanding what will happen if you come back with a proposal, and they love it! We all know what happens when they don’t! Something like, “So if I come back with recommendations (I like this term much better than proposal) that you truly love within the investment we discussed, what happens at that point?”
- Once you understand each of these things you then need to set a Clear Next Step together of when this will happen. DO NOT WAIT TO SET THIS LATER! You must have a clear next step already agreed upon and have a true understanding of what will happen at that time.
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