Following Up is Not a Task, It’s a Lifestyle: 3 Ways to Master the Follow-Up

As an Account Executive at Contactually, I often consult decision makers on how to use our relationship management platform in a strategic way. We often use words like "follow up," "being outbound," and "doing outreach" to describe the consistent effort one needs to put into their network in order to strengthen relationships.

Many of our customers come away enthused about using a newly refined strategy to begin getting more out of their network. However, an inevitable conversation eventually crops up a few days later when the real challenges of "persistent follow-up" occur.

Let me go ahead and share a certain truism which is the conclusion of this post: Following up successfully is not a task that you perform at some point in your day; it is a round-the-clock effort that is continuously improved over time.

To further expand on this, if you block out a few minutes out of your day to email or call a list of people then you have already lost the follow-up battle.

The simple reality is that when you take a few seconds to think of an email to send someone you may actually be hurting yourself more than helping. Although one may exert a little effort when taking time out of their day to email or call someone, there is still a question of how much value the follow-up provided the recipient with.

After writing two or three follow-ups that were constructed in a few minutes or less, do you think the lead or contact will be waiting in desperate anticipation for the next email you will be sending them?