Once you apply to an opportunity, our goal at Sortlist is to make sure your agency is seen and considered by the client. We want to help you meet them as fast as possible, but also to reduce the ghosting you might experience.
We want you to easily make a great first impression and rapidly know if a client is interested in meeting you or not. The idea is for you to avoid losing time, to know on which clients you should focus on in priority, and to increase their attendance.
Today, we are releasing a new experience that will have this precise effect. You can watch this video to learn more, or keep reading the article :
In this article, you will discover how this new experience will help you raise interest from clients and why you should always:
Write a personalized message for the project owner and include it in your application.
Have recent and qualitative projects for each expertise you are prospecting in.
What clients experience once you've applied
The clients first receive a double notification, which has been improved.
They receive an email:
And they receive an SMS:
In both cases, the clients are prompted to review your application and confirm if they’re interested to meet.
Once they click on the link, they can then review your application and get access to multiple information:
Your introduction message,
Your agency’s resume,
Your portfolio of projects (⚠️ For relevancy purposes, we only show projects related to the expertise required by the client’s project ⚠️.)
Your team picture,
Your reviews,
And your awards.
The client can then confirm their interest and continue, or decline your application:
if the client confirm their interest and want to go further with you, they’ll be able to accept your meeting invite:
Of course, the client can always propose a new time, should their availabilities to meet have changed in the meantime.
In any case, once the client accepts the meeting, you’ll be able to meet at the decided time, either by phone call or by visio:
Asking the client to confirm their interest will change two things for your agency:
You’ll have an increased show-up rate and less ghosting.
You’ll have more chances of closing the client, as we warmed them up before hand.
On the other hand, If the client declines your application, not only will you know right away for you to move on and get a refund of the opportunity price you paid, but you will also know why the client is not interested:
We ask them the reason why they decline your application, for you to get a better understanding and receive actionable feedbacks to improve your profile as well as your outreaching efforts.
Watch this video to learn more:
What should you do, as an agency?
As explained, this update will have two impacts:
It will reduce ghosting and increase prospects responsiveness.
You’ll have higher chances of closing the opportunity, as interest of prospects will be higher since they confirmed they wanted to meet you.
Even though this experience is dedicated to clients, there are two things you can do as an agency to get the most out of it.
First, when you apply to an opportunity, make sure to write a personalized message for the project owner and include it in your application. Indeed, writing a message increases by 50% your chances of meeting the prospect.
Check out this article to know how to write the perfect first message.
Second, make sure to have recent and qualitative projects for each expertise you are prospecting in. As explained, when a client reviews your application, he will only see your projects that are related to the expertise he needs. This being for relevancy purposes.
So if your portfolio is made up of 9 website creation projects and 1 SEO project, your SEO project will be the only one displayed when you apply to SEO opportunities. This might impact your conversion rate, so make sure to have as many diverse projects as possible.
What's next?
This is only the beginning. We have way more updates coming in the future to help your agency meet clients more efficiently. You’ll soon be able to fully customize your applications and build it with different blocks as you want it: text message, reviews, past projects, introduction video, etc.
In the meantime, we’d be happy to sit down with you and discuss your feedbacks to keep improving your experience with Sortlist.
Don't hesitate to contact us via the chat to discuss with our product team.