Have you ever met a useful contact or interesting person at an event or party, learnt a new concept at a  presentation or training course or come up with a great idea, and not got around to following it up? Do  you ever promise to do something, volunteer your time but not get around to doing it? Have you ever  done a marketing or new business activity but not monitored how it was received or what resulted from  it?

You get busy, put the business card or notes to one side or in your in-tray, lose the scrap of paper on  which you wrote yourself a note, then find them a few months later with a vague recollection of why you  kept them, but it‘s a bit hazy so you chuck them away.  What a waste.  
 
It’s a bit like a leaky bucket – you make the effort to fill it up by attending networking events, or going to  seminars but then you waste this investment of your precious time, energy and money by not following up.  Not only that, but people think that you don’t care about them because you don’t follow up after meeting  them, which is the opposite of what you intend.  
 
It is so easy not to follow things up, after all there’s quite enough to remember and do without adding  anything else new to think about.  
 
Follow up is crucial to:

• Create and build new personal and professional relationships
• Make ideas work in reality
• Realise your goals
• Convert prospects into business
• Embed and tailor learning from courses so that it works for you
• Create new habits and behaviours so that they become second nature  
  

If you could change just one simple thing in your life and work that would make an amazing difference,  improving follow up is a great and simple thing to choose.   
 
What stops follow up from happening?

There are many barriers that stop people from following up, some practical and others emotional. This is  an area that I’ve really worked on and am better at that I used to be,  but I could still improve alot. For me,  the barriers to making time to follow up were:

• I love and feel energised by ‘new’ things more than ‘old’ things
• I didn’t have a system to remind myself to follow up and what about
• I knew that I should be calling my contacts but I wasn’t clear about what exactly I should say to them, so did nothing
• I had negative limiting beliefs about follow up looking pushy/people being too busy to speak
• Because I am a proactive person who makes things happen, I had the mistaken belief that everyone else would operate like this when of course, everyone is different
• I thought that because people had met me once, they would remember/consider me when they needed my services, when of course it takes time to build relationships and many buying decisions are made on the basis of who’s there at the time and emotional connection which takes time to build and maintain 
• I love my own space and value time for myself  
  

What stops you from following up? Any of these?  

• Not having clear goals/purpose so the motivation to follow up isn’t a strong fuel for action
• Making assumptions about the situation or people e.g. they have a current supplier so there’s no point following up
• Not having a system to remember or remind you to follow up
• Not spending time planning and reflecting on how best to follow up and when
• Not being purposeful about why you initiated something to begin with
• Limiting beliefs and negative mental chatter e.g. “They would call me if they were interested”, “there’s no point anyway”, who am I to think that they would consider little old me and many more  
  

The opportunity cost of not following up in life and work is HUGE. Not only do opportunities not happen as a result, we don’t grow as much as we could by not taking time to apply new learnings to get them ‘in the muscle’; it takes about 26 times repeating something to create a new habit and this does take time and persistence.  
 
Not following up also gives us something else to beat ourselves up about, when most people do this far too much already!  
 
So what are the benefits of improving follow up?  

• You make the most of opportunities and the investment of your time, energy and money
• You look professional
• You are more likely to achieve your goals faster
• The likelihood is that your productivity will improve by making the most of opportunities rather than spreading yourself thinly
• Your self esteem and confidence is boosted as results are more likely to happen because you follow up rather than not
• You harvest more from the seeds you plant whether time, money or energy in networking, thinking of ideas or creating initiatives
• You feel good with a sense of completion rather than dissatisfaction from leaving things incomplete/undone and wasting time and resources
• You build trust because you are known as someone who is reliable and does what they say they will do
• You gain evidence on what works and what doesn’t work so you can refine and improve the approach next time  
  

12 tips to make follow up happen

1. Get a coach – having time in your diary to think and focus on achieving your goals in the right way for you which reflects what’s important to you creates a structure & system for follow up to happen
2. Plan regular time in your diary to follow up on new contacts and take the next actions to move forwards to achieve your goals
3. Have a system for follow up that works for you; a piece of paper, a folder on your computer, a weekly reminder in Outlook, make time and persist to make it work  
4. Think about the consequences of not following up – the wasted water from that leaky bucket  
5. Remember that persistence is more important for success that intelligence  
6. Be aware of the positive intention for you behind not following up, e.g. self-protection from failure – feel the fear and do it anyway  
7. Create a good filing system for your work/home projects with large simple labelling so that you can find things easily and are immediately 100% clear about the next step you need to take. Alternatively, get in a professional to create a bespoke system for you that works
8. Delegate follow up to someone else skilled and trained in it  
9. Ask yourself a self-reflective question to get clear re follow up, e.g. when and how is the best way for me to follow up on this?  
10. Pay attention to any mental negative chatter that sabotages your follow up – the voices of your limiting beliefs and change this with the help of self-coaching books or enlist the support of a coach to shift limiting beliefs and create new positive ones
11. Have motivating S.M.A.R.T. goals that you really want to achieve so that follow up feels vital, not just effort or another thing to do on your to do list 
12. Create the right environment for follow up e.g. have a particular place where you go to do follow up calls or letters  
    

Follow up is not a ‘sexy’ topic but it is a really important one that can make all the difference to success or failure.  
 
It is very easy not to follow up. So why not start now? What one thing could you do this week to follow up for your own benefit on these thoughts and tips about follow up?