Create a Follow Up Rhythm

One of the most powerful things you can do to build a sustainable business and powerful network is to have a solid follow up system in place. There are several programs and strategies you can implement, some more complicated than others.

Here are the basic steps you will go through to get your system set up.

Establish your follow-up rhythm
Gather your contacts
Get everyone into your system

The goal is to have a living list you can reference during your follow up time and know exactly who you need to connect with and how. Over time you will tweak this system to fit exactly how you work, but for now let’s start simple.

Establish a Follow-up Rhythm

Determining your follow up rhythm will help you decide how to organize and manage your contacts. You are likely to have 100’s of contacts and it is not reasonable for you to give each one the same personalized attention.

There will be some that you meet in person and some that you check on occasionally via email. The time and energy involvement is different and you will need to determine for yourself how many contacts of each type of activity you can manage during your follow up session.

The individuals in your contact lists will each need to be evaluated as to where they fit in your follow-up system and how often you will connect with them and what type of follow-up activity you will conduct.

Contact Type: What type of contacts will go into your follow-up system?

Each individual you meet will fit into your world in a different way and you will want to customize a follow-up plan unique to each. Having a good contact category system will give you a starting place to decide the frequency and follow-up activities your people need.

Past Clients – Individuals who have purchased from you in the past.
Potential Clients – Individuals who have shown an interest in your services.
Current Clients – Individuals who are in an active contract with you for services.
Past Clients – Individuals who have purchased from you in the past.
Champions – Individuals who are on your side and provide support and encouragement.
Power Partners – Individuals who share customers with you.
Personal Connections – Friends and family

Contact Frequency: How often do you want to connect with your people?

What rhythms will you use to stay in touch with your people? Some will warrant more frequent connections than others at different times and locations in your rhythm.

Weekly – New connections, accountability champians, and personal connections.
Monthly – Active clients, past clients, and ready potential clients, and personal connections.
Quarterly – Potential clients, past clients, and personal connections.
Yearly bi-yearly – Your big list of potentials, past clients, and personal connections.

Follow-up Activities: How do you want to stay connected with your people?

Make a quick list of the activities you want to do as part of your follow up system and give yourself a rough estimate of how many of these activities you can manage in a day, week or month.

These are your follow up activities. Feel free to add or subtract activities that resonate as you find your way.

Personal emails
Mailed cards
Phone calls
In-person and video meetings
Other

Gather All Your Contacts

Contacts can be a bugger to wrangle and there are no perfect systems.

In the BLOG POST: Do You Know Where Your Contacts Are? I share more information about “where” your contacts can be found in your current digital system and how you can use this to your advantage.

The best place to start is with your primary email account. Every email account comes with an address book that allows you to enter phone numbers, email address, home address, business address, website, and many other little details you may need, including a generous notes field you can use to keep track of things you need to know about each individual.

Both contact systems in Google and Outlook give you the ability to organize your contacts using labels (Google) and folders (Outlook).

Go into the contacts associated with your primary email account and create a “follow-up” label or folder.
Then go through your list and add the contacts that should be part of your follow-up system.
Check your phone, your address book, random scraps of paper, and other email accounts to see if you need to add anyone to this primary list.
This may also be a good time to update the information or make notes to help you as you prepare your follow-up connections.

Once you are done, look through your list.

Do you have the bandwidth to actually connect with that many?

Is your list a little sparse? What can you do to find more?

If you are not sure how many you can manage choose about 25 – 50 to start.

As you develop your follow up rhythm your follow up capacity will become clear. You will know exactly how many people you can reasonably connect with based on the way you want to connect. The only way you can get this knowledge is to just start doing.

Choose a day of the week to do your follow ups and go through this checklist:

Look through the contacts who made it to your Follow up list and choose 10 people.
- Send 5 Personalized emails – Write something specific and helpful to that individual.
- 2 Mailed cards – Thank you to clients or referral partners.
- 1 Phone call – Have a quick and fun chat to see how your favorite people are doing.
- Invite 2 people to schedule a in-person or video meetings within the next couple of weeks.
For each contact:
- Create a task in your follow up system and enter the date of this follow up and what you did.
- Then create a task for the next date you want to contact them and what you will do.
- Reference your note about the contact. Are they weekly? Monthly? Quarterly?
Make a note about how long it took to initiate a follow up with all 10 contacts and how much energy it required. Can you do more? Do you need to do less?
Adjust and do it again until you feel good about your bandwidth and rhythm.

Eventually you will have all of your people in your system and spaced out in a way that allows you to maintain connection and not get overwhelmed with the number of follow up energy you are using.

Get Everyone Into Your System

A long list of categorized contacts is super great, but it does not tell you when you need to follow up. You can decide that you want to connect with that new potential client next week, next month or next quarter, but how will you remember when to do that? It’s not like you will do your follow ups once a week and just connect with everyone on your list in one sitting. As mentioned earlier in this post some people you will connect with monthly or quarterly, with a good tool you can stager these contacts so you are not overwhelmed and know who to contact now and who should be on your list for next week.

What tools will you use to keep the system running? What is your process for tracking?

You will need to make a decision about the tools you will use to implement your follow up system. Do you want to set up a complete CRM (Customer Relationship Manager) or will a simple spreadsheet do? This is a rabbit hole question that has the potential to derail all your good intentions about follow up. We will not let that happen! Let’s talk about what you need to know and what you should consider as you choose which follow up system will be best for you at this stage of your professional career and business.

What type of system do you think you need?

Do you need a complete CRM (Customer Relationship Manager) system that tracks your communications with your clients and potential clients as well as a host of other business management tools?

Do you want a simple system to track who you talked to and when and what you talked about? Would a spreadsheet do everything you need?

How technical are you?

Do you love to tinker and play with new tools? Can you figure things out in a reasonable amount of time?

Are you comfortable with your digital tools once they are all set up and you know how they work?

Do you wish we could go back to the days of paper, pens and rolodex?

What is your budget?

Do you have the resources for the regular fee of a quality CRM and to be able to hire someone to set it up and train you and your people in its use?

Can you afford a modest fee for a simple system that is easy to set up and use right away?

Are you on a tight budget and need to keep your expenses as low as possible?

While there are a ton of options available it is easy to narrow in on what you need based on the answers to these questions.

A Full CRM System

A complete CRM system will give you the most features and the coolest options for tracking your communications and keeping you on track with your follow-ups. These systems are generally the most expensive and require high technical skill in the set-up phase. If your budget allows, you will benefit greatly from the services of a CRM consultant company to help you make the best choice and get it implemented properly.

I highly recommend Sara Kappler Consulting to advise and help you set up the right system for you. Tell her I sent you.

If you feel the need to do a bit of research on the tools available, I share a few strategies and resources in the BLOG POST: So Many Choices! How do I Decide?

A Simple Contact Management Tool

If you have less income and basic technical skill you will be able to set up a contact management tool and get your follow up strategy in place with a little bit of focused time and energy.

A tool that I recommend and can help you with is Zoho Contact Manager.

This tool has a very useful FREEmium version and will be extremely helpful for tracking contact communications.

In the BLOG POST: Set Up Zoho Contact Manager for Follow Up I will walk you through setting up this system so you can get your follow up rhythm locked in.

A Spreadsheet

Do not underestimate the power of a good spreadsheet.

Using Microsoft Excel, Apple Numbers, or Google Sheets to track contact communications has been a solid strategy for decades. If you are already confident in using spreadsheets you will be able to set up a follow-up system within a few minutes. If you are not yet comfortable with spreadsheets this exercise is an excellent way to practice your spreadsheet skills in a useful and practical way.

Join me in the BLOG POST: Using a Spreadsheet as a Follow Up System.

Where we will talk about how to get the contacts from your email account into a spreadsheet and then set up that spreadsheet to use it as a follow up system.

However you choose to develop your follow up system you will gain the most benefit over time. Be diligent, be consistent and make this a regular habit in your business and you will always be able to earn more business.