“Success comes from taking the initiative and following up… persisting… eloquently expressing the depth of your love. What simple action could you take today to produce a new momentum toward success in your life?” Anthony Robbins
I confess, I have been guilty of the crimes of bad follow-up and I know it has held me back. I still fall of the wagon more times than I should.
You may have noticed a plural in the opening sentence, the ‘s’ at the end of crime is there because there are two distinct types of bad follow-up.
Maybe it’s better to clarify what I mean by “follow-up” first – it can be telephoning or e-mailing after exchanging business cards or when we give a subordinate a task and we check if the task is being, or has been, successfully performed.
The two types are: common negligence of failing to follow-up and deliberate excess follow-up (overkill).
Do we fail to follow-up sales leads because we have so many that we don’t need the extra business, or, is it because we are not comfortable making that first phone call (fear of rejection)?
That would mean we just exchange business cards to be polite. I don’t know how many business cards can be made from the average tree, but in any case, it is a waste.
We forget that it creates a bad impression if we say we will call and then don’t.
What about the other extreme, bombarding the person with e-mails and phone calls, the dreaded overkill that labels the sender as either desperate or a time waster? Sometimes I don’t give out my business card if I have doubts about the person but at times you just can’t avoid it and end up being pestered.
Failing to follow-up with subordinates at work is a capital crime, since it affects quality, the way we work as a team and whether we keep staff motivated.
The amount of follow-up should decrease with the length of time that a person has been doing a task. New, or inexperienced, staff need timely attention – they may not understand what you expect of them and any work for a prior boss may have been handled completely differently. Clear instructions and encouragement to ask questions without fear of looking stupid, avoids costly mistakes.
Once again we have the opposite extreme – stifling the competent employees by constantly looking over their shoulder. Not showing confidence in their work, can cause frustration that could result in them leaving or starting to underperform.
Follow-up should be regarded as ‘protection of investment’.
In the case of contacts, you are protecting your investment in time and credibility, and in the second you are supporting your team to perform at their best.
