Follow Up And The Priority Pole

It’s no longer a secret. Most sales professionals, entrepreneurs, businesses and non-profit organizations today recognize the value and importance of relationships. They also appreciate that effective and consistent follow up supports that. Yet despite very best intentions, many don’t do nearly as good a job in that area as they would like.

Why?

There are a multitude of reasons but ultimately it comes down to the fact that they haven’t yet made it a priority.

The reality is that these days we live very busy lives and there are a million things that need doing, many of which have little to do with generating revenue or adding value to our business or organization. Yet because these things often appear urgent and time sensitive they tend to rise to the top of our priority pole and get done first. Interesting.

Unfortunately, this leaves little time for important but not urgent activities, activities that bear significant fruit further down the road. Following up, staying in touch with clients, prospects and others, is one of these.

In his book ‘The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People’ author Stephen Covey talks about the 4 quadrants that our daily activities typically fall into and he identifies the quadrants in which most of us tend to spend much of our time. Very enlightening. If you haven’t read the book, or have read it but not recently, I strongly recommend that you revisit it and do a lot of highlighting or note taking. It can change your life!

But let’s say we do get our act together and make it a priority to block out time for follow up. Where do we go from here? Who is it that we should even be following up with?

During the very early years of my sales career I thought it was just prospects. They hadn’t bought from me yet so it seemed obvious that staying in touch would probably be a good idea until they did. Then later I came to understand that it was also important to follow up with them after they had bought from me … what a novel concept.

But that was only the beginning. Through a combination of time, experience and learning from others I gradually came to see the value and importance of staying in touch with almost everyone in my life. I came to understand that people know people who know people.

The person you meet at a networking event that doesn’t appear to have any potential of becoming a customer may have a friend, family member or associate that could become your most important client if they only introduced them to you. The prospect that chooses one of your competitors today rather than you could become a solid client down the road if you made even a modest effort to stay interested and connected. And the fringe client that currently does business with you only occasionally could, with nurturing, develop into a referral generating machine.

Despite the obvious benefits, following up effectively and consistently may seem a daunting task initially but in today’s world we have many wonderful tools that can help. So maybe it’s time to deliberately push it up your priority pole. Block out time for it in your calendar on a regular basis. Do a little homework. Seek out people that are already good at following up and pick their brains to learn what they do and how they do it. Experience has taught me it’s an investment well worth making.