Create a Follow Up System

One of the most powerful things you can do to build a sustainable business 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 elements you need to get your system started.

• Gather all your contacts into one place
• Identify your clients
• Identify your potential clients
• Estlalish a follow-up rhythm

Gather All Your Contacts

The best possible situation would be for you to have immediate access to anyone you wish to contact from anywhere you are. Your smartphone gives you the best shot at this ideal situation. Anywhere you go you can capture contact information and have it automatically update to all your devices for use in a variety of situations.

Your email account has a contact list that allows you to input phone, email address, home address, business address, website, and many other little details you may want, including a generous notes field you can use to keep track of things you need to know.

Your first step will be to take advantage of both these wonders.  Let’s make sure your phone is synced to your email contacts and any new contacts you enter are automatically updated to your email list.

In your phone’s settings under contacts or accounts you should be able to see which email accounts are set up on your phone and if your phone is accessing the contacts of these accounts.

The iPhone allows you to set a “default” account to save new contacts. Make sure it is set to the email account you have designated as your primary contact account.

For Android, your phone will save your new contacts to the account that you saved to last time. So once you save someone to your preferred account you should be set.

To test it save a contact in your phone and then go check your email contacts and then save a contact in your email and check your phone contacts.  It make a minute or two for the information sync so don’t panic if it doesn’t update right away.

Identify and categorize your people

Determining how you like to follow up and stay in touch with our people will inform to how you eventually decide to organize your contacts. You likely to have 1000’s of contacts and it is not reasonable that you will be able to give each one the same personalized attention. There will be some that you want to meet in person regularly and some that you touch base occasionally via a personal email check-in. Others, the majority, can go into a list of people you send automated announcements to or put on your company newsletter list.

How do you want to stay connected with your people and your potential people?

Do you like to meet people in person, video chat, phone call?

How often do you send emails or physical cards?

How do they move along the process?

When you meet a person, you will decide if and how they fit in your world. We often do this unconsciously; Yes, Maybe, No.

Where do they end up?

Friend, client, colleague, partner, random stranger.

Each person in your contact list will automatically fit into a simple category in your mind and this can be translated into your system so that you can be more intentional in how you take care of your people. Once you have thought through how you want to maintain relationships with your people and who you want to nurture, then you can make strategic decisions on how to organize them.

How often should you reach out to someone?

Some of your people will need regular maybe even daily or weekly contact and with others you can go years between communications. This frequency can be used as an organizing tool for establishing your follow up rhythm.

Establish a follow-up rhythm

Let’s build a basic follow-up plan based on frequency. As you work with this plan watch for ways to naturally adjust it to suit you, your people, and the way you want to work.

You can implement this plan with the tools you already have.  Both Google and Outlook give you the ability to organize your contacts using labels (Google) and folders (Outlook).

Go into your contacts on your computer and create the following labels or folders.

Once your labels are created go through your list and mark each contact according to the frequency you wish to connect regardless of the “type” of contact they are.

After categorizing your people note how many people are in each category.

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

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

Upon implementing this rhythm you will quickly determine your capacity and your follow up habit will become a joy.