Follow-up? Who cares!

Actually, everybody should care about follow-up. Unfortunately, it’s the one thing that fails at most companies. You are probably aware of the typical scenario. You’re out and about doing your thing and run in to somebody you don’t know but end up talking to anyway. You might be in a waiting room someplace, or on the sidelines watching your child play soccer. Next thing you know, you’re engaged in a conversation with this person and one thing leads to another and they find out what you do and what-do-you-know? They are interested to learn more. As a matter of fact, they are really interested because they could actually use your services. But, as luck would have it, you don’t have a business card, and of course, they don’t either. You manage to scrible down their name, phone number and even an email on a napkin from the treat bag (sure glad whoever brought treats thought of napkins too). You stuff the napkin in your pocket or purse, your kids win the soccer game and home we go. What a game! Not only did we win, but I actually got a potential prospect out of the deal. Fantastic! Unfortunately, however, what happens next is an all-to-common cascade of events resulting in something we call follow-up failure. Usually, one of two things happen. The information on the napkin never sees the light of day (ending up in the laundry or worse yet, at the bottom of a purse never to be seen again). Or, the napkin makes it to your desk, you pick up the phone and actually make a call to your new prospect friend. When you hear their voice mail greeting kick in, you leave a nice message and let them know how much you enjoyed the conversation and how you would like to take this to the next step. Message left. Obligation complete. Now, just sit back, relax and wait for them to return your call. You get busy, life gets busy, things happen, fires need to be put out, places to go, people to see, no return call. Napkin is gone. No more follow-up. No more prospect. This scenario plays itself out over and over again, in business after business. More business is lost through follow-up failure than any other actionable cause, combined! The good news? It doesn’t have to be that way anymore!

Welcome to Fixing Follow-up Failure! This section of our website is dedicated to posts regarding strategies and techniques specifically geared towards stopping the insanity of follow-up failure. We’ve got a lot to talk about so stay tuned and check back often. As a matter of fact, you might want to subscribe to our RSS feed or follow us on Twitter (you can do both from our home page, upper right corner).

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