Confession: I suck at follow-up. There have been many times in my recent past where I’ve failed miserably at following-up or following through with people, so I’m trying to make a good-faith effort to improve in this area.
There are several aspects of follow up I want to explore, so I’m going to split them into a series of posts, starting with this one.
Why is this important? Well, other than the obvious personal business reasons (I make part of my living through freelancing) there’s also just the common courtesy aspect of holding up your end of a relationship. Not following up with people is a good way to lose customers and friends. And, since many of us suck at this, it’ll be helpful to all parties involved if at least some of us get better at it, right?
Human connections are why we’re here, folks. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
So, first up: following up just after meeting someone.
I suspect a lot of people will relate to this: You meet someone at a networking event, or just out and about in your daily routine. You have a nice conversation, make a connection, exchange business cards, shake hands. The whole nine yards. You may even go as far as to add that person into your contacts list when you get home. (I’m willing to bet the majority of us don’t even get that far.)
And then that’s it. The card goes into a drawer, or a contact sits in your phone, and you never speak to that person again.
I don’t know about you, but meeting new people is a big effort for me. I am not comfortable around strangers. Putting myself in a position to meet new people is hard work for me, so I’ve taken to getting pretty mad at myself for making all that effort and then not following through after the hard part is over.
So here’s the easy fix. A day or two after meeting someone new, I now send something like the following:
Person’s name here,
It was great meeting you whenever we met. Add something specific I remember about our conversation. If you ever want to connect again to talk about something relevant given what we talked about, feel free to reach out.
Your name
Now you don’t just have a business card in a drawer, or a new contact in your list that you won’t remember in a year. You have an actual human connection. If they are a contact worth keeping, they will likely reply with a quick “Thanks” email, at the very least. They will more likely remember you among the sea of other random people they handed a card to that week, because they’ve now connected to you twice. And you’ll be in their email address history, should they ever struggle to find your card in the drawer into which they likely dumped it.
Sending this email takes 30 seconds, max. You can even create TextExpander snippets with a few templates, to make it even faster.
Not everyone will become your best friend just because you did this. But they very likely won’t remember you at all if you don’t.
So how do I get better at this? Do I set a reminder for myself whenever I get a new business card? Do I put it in my todo list? One thing that has worked for me recently is whenever I actually think to myself, “It was great meeting new person yesterday. I should totally follow up,” I actually do it. Right then. Right there. On my phone. My iPad. Whatever device is handy. I don’t wait until I forget about it later.
Try it. Like I said. It takes 30 seconds, max. Less time than it takes to check your Twitter feed. You have no excuse.
