How to Follow Up With Leads Who Think They're Already Winning

Your newest lead probably doesn't think she has a problem. That's where learning how to follow up with leads has to start.

She grabbed your lead magnet because a reel caught her eye. In her head, she's doing fine. So your follow-up has to show her something she can't see yet. Then it has to give her a way to fix it. This post walks you through what that looks like with one lead, one coach and the first three emails I'd send.

We give prospects too much credit

I'll use two example characters to show you how this works. Jen is a 48-year-old fitness coach. She helps women over 40 lose weight on a GLP-1 without losing their muscle. Her lead magnet is "Lose Fat, Not Muscle on Your GLP-1," a 5-day bodyweight workout and protein plan. Carol is her newest lead.

Carol is 51. She's been on the shot for three months and she's down 19 pounds. The scale is moving for the first time in 10 years. She thinks everything is awesome and she's crushing her goals.

Carol has watched a hundred reels about protein. If you asked her how many grams she ate yesterday, she'd have no idea. She just knows the scale's moving in the right direction.

This is where our industry gets it wrong. We give people like Carol way too much credit.

We assume a woman who downloaded a protein plan knows her protein. We assume she knows she has a problem, because she raised her hand. Carol doesn't.

So if you were Carol, why on earth would you hire a coach at this point? You wouldn't, because as far as Carol's concerned, she's already winning.

Why a few more tips won't move her

A lot of coach follow-up reads like a second lead magnet, with more protein tips and maybe a recipe or two. That kind of email helps a lead who already knows she has a problem. Carol isn't there yet.

So if you send Carol a few more tips, she'll nod and then keep scrolling.

She's watched a hundred reels already. One more tip feels like more of the same. And since she believes she's winning, nothing in a tip gives her a reason to act today.

She's like a locomotive speeding towards a steep cliff, and she doesn't even know it. Good lead follow up starts by showing her the cliff.

The gap Carol can't see

Carol is walking into three traps she can't see.

The first is the muscle trap. In one of the biggest GLP-1 studies, about 40% of the weight people lost came from lean tissue, and that includes muscle. So up to 40% of the weight Carol is losing could be coming from the muscle she needs to age well.

The second is the metabolism trap. The less muscle she carries on her frame, the fewer calories her body burns just sitting there. That means it takes fewer calories for her to put weight back on later.

The third is the stopping trap. In the same study, people who came off the drug put back two thirds of the weight within a year.

Nobody's tricking or manipulating Carol by making her aware of these traps. That's what the research shows.

So there's a gap between where Carol thinks she is and where Carol really is. Your follow-up has to show her that gap before anything else can happen.

How to follow up with leads so they see the gap

Your nurture emails have two jobs. First, they need to hold a mirror up so Carol can see the gap. Second, they need to give her the permission and the plan to cross that gap.

The order matters. A plan only looks useful to someone who can see the problem it solves. So the mirror comes first.

I send 10 emails over 10 days, one per day. The first three do the mirror work. We call that problem awareness. Each one points Carol back to the core message in Jen's lead magnet, which is that up to 40% of her weight loss could be coming from her muscle.

Email 1 starts with what she already wants

Jen opens with the win Carol already has. "The scale is going down, and that's exactly what you wanted."

Then she plants a new thought. "But the scale can't tell you what you're actually losing." Then she sends Carol back to page one of the plan, where the muscle loss message lives.

Email 2 shows her what she's losing right now

Email 2 runs on loss aversion. Two researchers, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, found that losing something hurts about twice as much as gaining the same thing feels good.

So Jen shows Carol what she's losing right now, which is muscle and every calorie that muscle used to burn for her. Large studies link muscle loss to higher mortality, hormone disruption and a decline in immune function. That's a lot more personal than another protein tip.

Email 3 gives her the long-run number

Email 3 is about what happens to women who come off the shot with no plan. It follows David Ogilvy's rule that facts sell. This is where the two thirds number goes.

A real number from a real study beats my opinion every single time. By the end of email 3, Carol should be clearly seeing some gaps.

From there, the rest of the sequence works on the excuses she's been leaning on, and the last three emails open the doors to Jen's program. None of that lands until Carol sees the gap.

How to nurture leads in your own business

You can run this same play for your clients today. Start with this question. What's the one thing your clients are sure they already know that they're completely wrong about?

For Jen, it's protein. Her leads are sure they eat enough, and Carol can't tell you her grams from yesterday. Write your answer down. That's where your lead thinks she is.

Then find the real number from a real study that shows where she really is. Jen uses the 40%. Pick a number from your own niche that you can point to.

Now build your first three emails around that gap. Email 1 starts with the win she already has. Email 2 shows her what she's losing right now, and email 3 gives her the long-run fact. Point every one of them back to your lead magnet.

This is how to follow up with potential clients who don't think they need you yet. You meet them where they think they are, and you show them the truth with care.

Holding up a mirror is an act of care

Holding a mirror up to Carol's face is not manipulation because Jen has the highest intentions. She wakes up every day wanting to save women over 40 on GLP-1 medication from taking a wrecking ball to their metabolism on their way to their goal weight.

Once you've written your emails, they go into a workflow inside a CRM like Thrive Engine. You build that workflow once. Every new lead who asks for your lead magnet then gets your emails in order, one per day, and your job is to read and answer the people who reply.

That's how to follow up with leads who think they're already winning. Show them the gap first, then show them the way across.

I walk through all 10 of Carol's emails and the psychology behind each one in the full video, How to Get Coaching Clients With Email (Why Your Follow-Up Isn't Working). Watch it here: [VIDEO LINK]