Follow-Up –
The Arteries of Your Business

Over the past 15 years I’ve consumed thousands of presentations, books, articles, and tips on business success, and one of the few constants is the critical importance of follow-up. You can make the greatest impression at networking events but if you don’t follow-up there will be no relationship. You can be a brilliant salesperson, but if you don’t follow-up the sale is lost. You can have the best product on the market, but if you don’t follow-up your customer service value plummets along with your business. So, while follow-up may not be the life-blood of your business, it can be the arteries through which that life-blood flows.

Now, before I go further, I want to confess that although I know the importance of follow-up, my arteries get clogged just like many of yours. There are always just so many pressing things to do it’s impossible to get them all done. However, I have found a few tools and systems that help me break through the blocked sections and do the best follow-up I can.

For those of you who were born with all that good cholesterol in your system and are already pros at this (and I know some of you reading this are), be patient with those of us who are not so blessed.

The Omega-3 Essential Oil

The absolute essential for any follow-up system is a good contact management system. Besides the obvious contact information, you can keep notes on a variety of topics – where you met, their interests, friends you have in common, or whatever will help you remember them and create ways to personalize your follow-up. I also try to enter things that might trigger ideas to help me stay connected in a meaningful way.

Once you’ve entered this information into your computer, you can set reminders for those follow-up actions you need to take (call, write, whatever). The best part is, you can set reminders for months in advance and the computer remembers. And, you can keep a record of all these efforts so you’ll know what you’ve done with the person.

Another great benefit of a contact manager is being able to create templates for letters or messages you send frequently. Remember, Tricia’s Rule #2 is Never Retype! With just a couple of clicks, you can have a personalized letter or message ready to send.

Blast through Your Clogs

Getting business cards and contacts into my computer used to be a blocked artery. Now, I use CardScan (http://www.cardscan.com) to scan in business cards. This program can use the flatbed scanner you probably already have or you can purchase their scanner designed for the task (it can feed a stream of cards in more quickly). With just a few clicks, the program will then transfer the information into your contact manager.

Another software tool I use to get addresses into my contact manager is AddressGrabber (www.egrabber.com). It can grab addresses from a variety of software programs (Outlook, ACT!, etc.), from the clipboard, or from highlighted text (on a website for example). Then, it can paste it into those different places as well. So, if I get an email message from someone containing their contact information, I can highlight the text, click on AddressGrabber, then paste it into my contact manager. One clogged artery cleared.

Add a Little Fiber to Your System

I consider my PDA (currently a Dell Axim Pocket PC device) a great tool in my follow-up system. Besides holding all those details I’ve been gathering, I can give contact details for a referral to someone I think could benefit from connecting with them (which saves me time when I get back to my office); enter new details on the spot; and, add follow-up items with reminders (which then syncs with my desktop contact manager when I get back to the office).

Exercise Keeps those Arteries Clear

Besides the obvious follow-ups (you promised to send information on your product or service, etc.), you want to find ways to stay in touch and build relationships. I find the web is a great resource for this. When I’m surfing the web, I keep an eye out for articles, websites or other resources I can send to people. For example, if I run across an article about how technology is impacting an industry, I’ll send it to people in that industry. It’s a great way of letting them know I’m thinking of them.

If you have any questions on any of these tools or systems, please feel free to contact me. And, if you have a favorite artery-clearing tool, I’d love to hear about it.