They said yes to lunch. Now what?

Last week I asked you to do three things before April 15. Write the CPA outreach. Follow up with your warm prospects. Put one touchpoint on the calendar.

If you did those things, good. If you didn’t, do them today. It is not too late.

But here is what I want to talk about this week, because this is the part most firms skip right over.

One outreach is a start. It is not a strategy.

Estate planning decisions rarely happen in the same week someone gets an email. Or attends a workshop. Or has a conversation with their CPA who mentioned your name. The timeline between “I need to do this” and “I booked the consult” is often months. Sometimes longer.

Which means the firms that get the call are the ones who were still there when the prospect finally said okay, now.

So the question is not just “did I reach out?” The question is what happens after that.

Here is what that looks like in practice.

When a CPA says yes to lunch, what comes after the lunch? Do they go into a system? Do they get a quarterly update they can actually share with their own clients? Or does the relationship sit warm until you run into each other again and feel vaguely guilty about not following up?

When a warm prospect opens your email but does not respond, what is the next touchpoint? And the one after that?

This is where consistency becomes your competitive advantage. Not because you are sending more messages than anyone else. Because you are the attorney who never disappears.

Before next week, here is what I want you to map out.

  1. Your CPA follow-up rhythm. After the lunch, what is the plan? A quarterly update they can forward to clients, a check-in every few months, it does not have to be complicated. But it does have to be written down.
  2. Your warm prospect sequence. If someone engages but does not convert, how many more times will they hear from you? One follow-up is not enough. Three to five touches over 60 to 90 days is closer to reality for estate planning.
  3. Your content calendar through June. What are you sending, posting, or publishing between now and summer? Even a rough outline keeps you from going dark in the exact window you worked so hard to show up in.

You did the hard part by reaching out before the exhale. Do not let the momentum stop there.

The firms getting consults in May planted their seeds in April and kept watering them.

Here for the follow-through, not just the launch,

Laura Lee