Are You A Follower?

Generally, the “term” follower pertains to social media However the act of following or follow up is a crucial and purposeful act, after you meet people for the first time.

If you don’t follow up with the people, you might as well give it a miss.

I’ve had many people tell me how they manage to collect a lot of business cards but were unable to follow up either due to lack of time or because they couldn’t recall the details of the person they met.

So while a quick google search will give you many articles like “ 7 simple ways to follow up” or “9 Nifty Steps in Networking”, I’ll give you my “2 terrific tips” that are a bit different.

1. Follow up at the event itself: If you meet someone you connect well with, let them know you would like to meet them again. Ask them how their week looks and if it would be okay for you to contact them later with a date and time to meet. This way you get a commitment in person and they also look out for your email/message, reminding them of this agreement.
2. Review your Follow up: Sometimes our follow ups don’t get a response, which can be disappointing and we tend to personalize this.

“Maybe he/she wasn’t interested in me?”.

However, a more helpful option would be to go back and review your follow up and see if you are able to change it next time around.

If you had emailed them, then see what you wrote. Was it too vague?“ let’s meet for coffee..” (why?) or too self-serving? “ I wanted to know if you could help me”. Think of ways you can alter this, when you reach out next.

I once contacted an old colleague of mine via email and informed her that I was setting up a new business and asked if she was free to meet up? I Didn’t hear back.

After waiting for a fewweeks I then sent her a message saying: “I have just set up my new business and wanted to know if I could refer some of my clients to you, as I was unable to manage a bigger caseload at this time”.

I got a response from her the same day, saying she’d be delighted to meet up.

Good luck and stay Linkked!