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Follow up; Sooner or Later?

Submitted by Mitch Seigel on Tues, 12/08/2015

A major part of time management is in your follow up. What is your timing on getting back with clients? If they are clients with whom you met you should be following up with a thank you note immediately. If there were questions that needed to be answered, this should be done inside forty eight hours. If you have new clients you are pursuing, you should be waiting at least two days between contacts, unless you have been given instructions otherwise.

All of this follow up needs to be balanced throughout your week, without missing a beat. That means keeping track in one way or another. That is up to the individual and what he/she is accustomed to using to manage their time. At a point in sales, you may have two few or too many prospects you are trying to contact. That also differs from one individual to another.

The repercussion of follow up is that your client or prospect will feel your interest in helping their business. You will lift your level higher than the competition and opportunities for sales will arise. If you wait too long between contacts you run the risk of your competition taking the sale away from you, or your prospect forgetting about you. On the other hand, if you follow up too quickly or too often, you run the risk of turning the client off because of being too aggressive for their business. It is definitely a fine line!

In any case, you need to measure your follow up at all times. In some cases you may miss opportunities for being too early or too late in your follow up. That is OK, as long as it is a rare occurrence. It takes time to understand your strengths and weaknesses in follow up, so be patient and most of all, just pay attention to it at all times!

What are your challenges when it comes to follow up? I look forward to hearing your comments. Until next time…